Knishkowy started How Strange It Is To See in one city and finished it in another, writing while packing up an old home and recording while barely out of boxes in a new one. It’s unsurprising then that the release revolves around ideas of letting go of familiar places and faces and embracing new ones. Opener ‘Everything is Going to be Fine’ sees the narrator still holding on to an old love, waiting for some form of communication and wondering if they are now sharing their life with someone else:

“I heard you’ve been living with someone new
It’s no wonder when your rent is so high
Do you still wear the coat that I left for you,
When I was in a hurry to catch that plane on time?

But everything is gonna be fine
When leaving was the last thing on your mind”

‘Left on Jewel’ starts on a similarly morose note but soon develops into something brighter, the upbeat second half almost akin to The Cave Singers’ jaunty folk. While the lyrics are still concerned with a lost love there is a shift in tone, as if the narrator has moved past holding out hope, now able to look back with fondness without being needled by the sharp pains of regret. The writing is free from animosity and full of clarity and too lovely not to quote in full:

We left, caught in the eye of the storm
Making music of lovers with things that we’d known
Through the snow and the rain, through the bibles of our days,
We sing to what’s gone

That night we became almost “you and I”
From the station to Jewel, you were beaming inside
Til the light of the dawn,
We followed evening’s song there to simpler times

I swore off the city, I swore off the lights
Could’ve  sworn that what wasn’t best was what I left behind
But I swore to myself
When it was time to take that right and leave that night

‘Red Coat’ fits into this sense of enlightenment too, as if the imminent move has triggered a new view of everyday circumstances. As we said in the première post: “The track exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”.

The EP closes with the title track, a sparse, finger-picked folk song which bursts with surprising volume at all the right moments. Here the narrator stumbles across his old love weeks before leaving, and while things threaten to slip into their old ways, it seems his mind has been made up, changed. “You ask when I’ll be back / Allure, attack / And I answer with a drink”, he sings. “Tried to make it last for what we had, not what we have / For what we lack“.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from Bandcamp, and I believe the good folks over at Lily Tapes and Discs are releasing a cassette. And, if you haven’t already, why not check out Adeline Hotel’s first album, Leave The Lights?

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“Rather than telling full stories, Timmins’ words instead come off as a stream of consciousness, a man alone and thinking, spilling words that he wishes he could share with those that need to hear them.”

Timmins is back with some new songs which continues this raw, finger-picked sound. Darker than anything on Six Songs, ‘To the Dark Horizion’ is as ominous as the title suggests, the restrained guitar providing a delicate frame upon which sit the haunting vocals which return to the prophetic phrase of the title. It’s the kind of defeated, sad mixture of plea and warning that is no doubt echoing around the UK after yesterday’s election – a belief that while we don’t have the answer, it can’t be what is happening.

“Imperfect dreams of an imperfect mind,
Time to pack up, take what’s left of mine
to the black horizon”

There a few more songs on his Soundcloud page, so head there if you want to hear more. Also, be sure to check out Six Songs if you haven’t already. Mark also does some great drawings so head on over to Tumblr to have a look at those.

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Robbie Bankes is a Calgary folk musician whose talents span an impressive array of instruments from around the globe. According to this feature by The Calgary Collective, he plays in groups that make a diversity of folk music, from traditional Quebecois to age-old Celtic stuff. But on this solo album, Through February Snow, which he released earlier this year, Bankes focuses on what sounds to me like american folk music, playing guitar, 5-string banjo and fiddle to make what he himself describes as, “sings songs of the dusty prairie and high mountain peaks.”

The entire album is peppered with great lyrics, which is as important to folk music as guitars are to rock. Opening track ‘Alice’ is a beautifully written and poetic (lost) love song, which utilizes the classic minimal folk formula – just one man and his guitar. It opens with the lines:

“Oh my Alice I’ve been dreaming ’bout your sea-blue eyes
All the letters that I’ve sent that have not met with replies
Maybe you got lucky or you just can’t find the time.
Oh my Alice I’ve been dreaming about our lives”.

The second song is ‘February Snow’ which sounds warm and cosy during the persisting winter chill. The songwriting is great again, see for example the refrain:

“There is a place that’Il like to go
To watch the city far below
And to hear the sounds and to see the show
And to wait for you and the February snow
Well you took off your shoes and showed me your soul
You gave me a lot of warm socks to keep out the cold”

‘Little Sadie’ is a change of direction, a throwback to old-timey Gothic folk, with a morbid atmosphere straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story. It tells the tale of a murder subsequent events from the perspective of the perpetrator:

“I went out last night to make a little round
I met little Sadie I blowed her down
Went back home and jumped into bed
.44 pistol under my head.”

Bankes shows his proficiency for writing sad and pretty folk songs again on ‘As I Walked Out’ (e.g. “I’ll pack my bags and I’m moving on to soft summer nights of silver and gold, long rides and hillsides and shivering cold.“), before providing a decidedly Canadian take on the classic folk song ‘Hang Me Oh Hang Me’ (“Up on the Rocky Mountains it’s there I’ll make my stand, with a rifle on my shoulder and a sixshooter in my hand”). ‘Up to Skoki’ is a banjo/fiddle instrumental, the soundtrack to a lively Appalachian celebration, and ‘The Blackest Crow’ sees things out with a wistful flourish, the musical equivalent of an evening with no company except the lonely pines and two foot of snow.

Music can be used to say a lot of different things but folk musicians are poets at heart and (to meat least) are best suited writing these kinds of songs. Lonely and lovelorn they may be, but they’re also songs of hope, of finding beauty in everyday life and the natural world, and a realization that our lives are not isolated events put the products of hundreds of years of history. Folk music paints a romanticized version of a life that is actually attainable. It doesn’t shy from sadness and hurt, in fact it can dwell on them, but it dwells on other things too, like how the town looks from the hillside or the sound of the river.

You can get Through February Snow via the Robbie Bankes Bandcamp page.

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