Gavanski went into the record with a desire “to make something bigger, more thought through,” and the sentiment is clear in the sound. Co-produced by Toronto-based musician Sam Gleason, Mike Lindsay (Tunng, LUMP) and Gavanski herself, the album was hammered into shape by different tastes and influences, taking something new from each collaborator. However, this was balanced against the desire to retain the organic simplicity that made Spring Demos so captivating, the trio aiming to “fin[d] essential things, not overblowing, keeping things bare and letting the elements speak for themselves.”

The result is a more mature record, one which shows the development of Gavanski’s artistic vision and practice. Which is not to say it is free of uncertainty, far from it, but now such doubt is not ignored or airbrushed but embraced as a fundamental part of art and life itself. For being an artist does not mean complete dominance over one’s creations. “Transforming a burning desire into something clear and tangible is a vulnerable and delicate act,” Gavanski explains. “You have to be able to let things happen, to accept losing control.”

Such ideas work their way into the themes of the record too. Living up to its name, Yesterday is Gone is ostensibly an album about the past—how we find ourselves governed by it, longing for it or fearing it. But just as Gavanski has learn to step back from that which she cannot control in her creative process, the songs offer a new mode of thinking about the past. One in which you let go, surrender to knowledge that there is no going back, and refocus your energy in a new direction. Yesterday is gone after all.

This is introduced in the delicate vulnerability of opener ‘One by One’, a story of a relationship that has faded to nothing, and continues through the psych-inflected folk of ‘Catch’ and the 60s pop-inspired title track. ‘Good Instead of Bad’ wrestles with potential actions in the aftermath, asking if it’s possible to move on with kindness instead of anger or sadness, and the playful energy of ‘Small Favours’ attempts to escape the weight of emotions by placing them is some sort of context. The yearning for what has been might remain, but it need not drag up or down completely. For with Yesterday is Gone, what Dana Gavanski offers is a transformation of longing—changing it from a paralysed act of retrospection to just another facet of ourselves, and a key component of our journey forward into the future.

Photo by Tess Roby

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