And the usual disclaimer applies, there were too many great tunes to include them all, so treat this more as a selection rather than a comprehensive round-up of the year. Enjoy.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Constellation

“You’re used to quiet words
and so am I
so I’ll just whisper“

Tiny Ruins – Dream Wave

“always a dream wave drawing you off track
dream wave, a coast calls you back“

Magana – Get it Right

“You were red but my gold turned you green
So you stood there lying through your teeth“

deer scout – holy ghost

“I could find a new kind of devotion
I could know you by another name“

Hovvdy – Meg

“Speak because i know you feel a certain way
but ill pass it along anyway“

Bedbug – Leaving Town, Moving to a National Park <3

“I’m too young for that anyways
everyone’s just tryna skip town these days“

Soccer Mommy – Skinned Knees

“i left
burning streets in tennessee
for a north east feel“

Mitski – Your Best American Girl

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me
But I do, I finally do“

LVL UP – Hidden Driver

“God is peeking
softly speaking
fucking everything
until I slowly do see“

Lisa Prank – Starting Again

“You say you’re not still drinking
you just started again
I swear I don’t still miss you
I just started again“

Dicktations – Dicktations Forever

“It’s hard to say when I first figured out something was wrong“

Joyride! – Running on Empty

“Young and running on empty
you said that you thought I looked pretty with my makeup on
so I went home and I took it off“

Sioux Falls (now Stranger Ranger) – Dom

“Spending too much time on the internet
are you ok? you don’t seem very into it“

Camp Cope – Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams

“It’s the trophy wives raising trophy wives raising children on TV
Scared of people like you and me
Just don’t ask questions you’ll sleep peacefully
We will not go out in silence and we will not go quietly“

Fake Boyfriend – BUMTOWN

“Why do I cling to the threads that mean the least?“

Outer Spaces – I Saw You

“I saw you, a shedding snake“

American Enthusiasm – Holy Wow

“Make a note of all the words I cough out on my death bed“

The Hotelier – Soft Animal

“Fawn, doe, light snow
Spots on brown of white 
make me believe that there’s a God sometimes“

Beach Slang – Future Mixtape for the Art Kids

“We’re not lost, we are dying in style
We’re not fucked, we are fucking alive“

CHUCK – Death

“You hold on to whatever kin
that keeps on breathin’ in
that keeps you from driftin’
like paper in the wind“

You Won’t – Ya Ya Ya

“So your daddy was a poltergeist
sent your little sister screaming down the hallway
well I don’t know about the afterlife,
but I can help you to forget about the old days“

Mountain Almanac – Kids Playing Outside

“Saturday morning, cartoon time, let’s go“

Basement Revolver – Johnny

“Please just stay away from Johnny
cos I love him understand“

Boy Scouts – Did You See My Cry

“walking walmart shopping center
i’d never been better
on my own two feet
i guess“

Free Cake For Every Creature – First Summer in a City

“i’ll be singing when i’m 90
climb a tree to see
what tastes to smokey sweet
first summer in a city“

Haley Heynderickx – First I’m Sorry

“Mother knows I drown in my lies
Father knows I learned my lesson the second time.
Ask me where I’ll go I’ll say do not know
No, I do not know“

ARMS – Missing

“I don’t want to force your hand
but wishes disguised as plans will never do
Like the king of deathbed regrets
and the queen of last requests could ever choose“

Naps – Bad Vibrations

“Can’t stand up to the world’s expectations
I’m living on a bad bad vibration“

The Washboard Abs – Day Draws Nearer

“Your backyard
you talked to God
about the heartbreak you forgot“

Trace Mountains – Forgiveness

“old dirt you thrown underneath the stair
is right there
right where you said i’d tremble and stare
at the vast unforgiving spirit lurking there
but it takes time, to realise forgiveness“

Nassau – Desert Blues

“I took a marker and wrote your number on the bathroom stall
That’s just my way of reaching out cos I’m too proud to call“

Adeline Hotel – Near You

“Sleep better tonight
In the heat of red moon light
Whatever we are, whatever we’ll be
I used to live near you, you used to love near me“

Simon Balto – Foothills

“I’ve never been a faithful man
I’ve always been too proud to pray
But won’t you come out to the foothills
And hold me together for one more day“

Cloud Cult – No Hell

“There’s no use in running unless you run like heck
The best things we’ve learned we learned from the wreck
Jesus coming back as a woman this time
Handing out hugs in the clinic line
Someone tell the devil we don’t need no hell
We’re all pretty good at beating up ourselves“

Slingshot Dakota – Break

“And in the end there’s two of us
it was always two of us“

Good Good Blood – No Sadness/Furrowed Brow

“We’ll have no sadness/furrowed brow
There is no shame in dying now
I said from my death bed“

Ben Seretan – Bowl of Plums

“My friends call me when they’re feeling low
We talk quietly for hours and walk the room
Flowers growing in a coffee can
Our lives are wonderful and sad sometimes“

Chris Bathgate – Big Ghost

“I got a Big Ghost
of static in my throat
from coming up too short“

Wintersleep – Metropolis

“The man that you are, the man you were, the man you left
Turn into stars, flowing in through the wilderness“

Mothers – Lockjaw

“I don’t want your kind words
I want your ghost inside a thimble“

Car Seat Headrest – Drunk Driver / Killer Whales

“You build yourself up against others’ feelings
And it left you feeling empty as a car coasting downhill
I have become such a negative person
It was all just an act
It was all so easily stripped away“

Space Mountain – Never Lonely

“Met a friend today
And im feeling okay
She’s in my head
I’m never lonely“

Hallelujah the Hills – What Do the People Want?

“What do the people want?
The people don’t know what they want“

Mount Moriah – Calvander

“Carry on and on and on on
With your cosmic reach
Newport river whispered fate
Spells cast with every crashing wave
Neon lines and a new name“

Frederick Squire – Bike Thief

“The lights are on
And we are sinking way down in our chairs
We don’t say much of anything
Even though there’s still a lot to say“

Kevin Morby – We’ve Been Here Before

“Running my mouth off at the storm
Yelling, “man, what the hell did you do that for?“

Sam Moss – Vertebrae

“Did you watch my vertebrae
Slendering out
Or did you watch your own?
Stretching skin over the bone
I’ve grown
Learning to be proud“

Arlo Aldo – House & Home

“O’er the mountains out past the trees
where the grasslands, meet the sky
you’ll find me singin’ my songs
with my lover in my mind“

Will Johnson – Nervousness Fangs

“Jesus what a mess
what they’re all selling
and what’s being sold“

Jeremy Squires – After All

“There’s an old painting of Jesus on a wall
and a tapestry that hangs by a cross
that weighs heavy on my shoulders now and then
I get caught up with why the things we love ain’t never last“

The Dead Tongues – Stained Glass Eyes

“Fifth wind brought a howl got me in a storm
I saw a lighthouse spinning at the edge of the world
like looking through a window to the day
I was born“

Kyle Morton – Automatic

“It’s my head, it’s my head
breaking itself to make a thought but instead
Just some pornographic images to stave off my death
It’s all automatic“

Keaton Henson – Alright

“Obviously
My wounds are open to see
But don’t take them seriously
I’ll be fine“

Talons’ – Work Stories

“Is this what the end of the world looks like?
Or is this just life?“

Jordan O’Jordan – A Lonely Road

“There are truths we may or may never know friend
and that is the point“

Mal Devisa – Sea of Limbs

“Honey-lover
keeper of the bees
Soft-spoken
seldom-seen“

Young Jesus – Hinges

“I’m pretty sure I’m a kind of collection of things
scattered throughout the backyard
under the moon
pulling weirdo slow dance moves
maybe always losing it a little
i am ashamed to believe in myself!“

Lung Cycles – For a While

“I feel like sharing
so I’ll press record
and I’ll tell you that I had a vision“

Sister Grotto – UNCANNY

“When we go, we go alone“

John K. Samson – Virtute At Rest

“You should know I am with you, know I forgive you
Know I am proud of the steps that you’ve made
Know it will never be easy or simple
Know I will dig in my claws when you stray“

If you missed it, you can see the list of our favourite albums of 2016 here, and stay tuned for our collection of the best name-your-price releases on Bandcamp next week.

The post Wake the Deaf’s Favourite Songs of 2016 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A book within a book, Hystopia is actually the novel left behind by Eugene Allen, a Vietnam vet from a slightly-alternate version of the 60s where John F. Kennedy survived Oswald’s assassination attempt and is serving his third term in office. Opened and closed by various notes and testimonies from friends and family members, Allen’s work makes up the majority of the novel, a narrative imagining characters from his time in Vietnam once they return home. The kicker, though, is that while they are back in the States, they never really ‘get home’, with the war following them back to a dystopian (but far from unrecognisable) America ravaged by biker gangs and forest fires.

In an attempt to solve the crisis of PTSD and violence, the government turn to an experimental psychiatric method called ‘enfolding’, where veterans reenact traumatic scenes while dosed up on a tranquilliser, Tripizoid. While even the doctors working on the project believe the technique to be without substance, it proves paradoxically effective for many subjects and blanks memories of combat. “Confusion is undoubtedly an element of the curative process,” writes Means. “In most cases the patient does forget about it, becoming fully immersed in the reenacted trauma’s nullification of the real trauma”.

Which isn’t to say it’s a silver bullet. Indeed the novel opens with a “failed enfold,” Rake, a man filled with the sort of all-consuming rage and propensity for violence unique to men forced into the sacrifices of war only to end up on the losing side. We find him with Allen’s sister, Meg (whom he has almost certainly kidnapped, and has undergone some degree of enfolding too), as they drive across Michigan on an anarchistic rampage of murder, drugs and destruction. Eventually, they reach the home of Hank, Rake’s former sidekick who has developed a love of trees since enfolding, a man who tries to protect Meg and figure out a way in which they can save themselves from Rake.

The second strand of the story deals with another enfold Singleton and his colleague Wendy, government officials breaking protocol to meet up and fall in love, who somehow end up on the trail of Rake, as though their rule bending was in fact a conspiracy on the part of their superiors to engineer the operation. Again though, confusion reigns, with Singleton’s boss admitting that a key part of being a commander is having the “gumption to go back and revise history”, talking of writing operation plans after the operation in order to ensure they are correct.

This sense of counter-history runs throughout the novel, from Singleton and Wendy’s quest and Hank’s transformation into peaceful nature-lover, right down to Eugene Allen’s re-telling (re-imagining?) of his sister’s story. What becomes important for these troubled people is not discerning the capital-T Truth but rather finding a variation they can believe in. More often than not, this involves a sense of mission, the victim’s need for order in the face of chaos, the desire for purpose or meaning in “an age when everything else seemed to be spinning deeper and deeper into despair,” anything which enables them to form a narrative of the world in a way they would like it to exist.

“It was crazy, he admitted, but it kept him going and like all good delusions it was fuelled by genuine hope and dedication to the truth”

And that’s what sets apart David Means’ Vietnam from that of the postmodern cannon. Yes, it is full of claims and counter-claims and impenetrable paranoia, but rather than using these to trace a descent into bewilderment, Hystopia utilises them to chart a way out. In a world where confusion and conflict constitute the resting face of the planet, maybe disinformation is needed not to obscure the truth but rather create it?

Here’s a playlist of songs that are suitable or relevant in one way or another, or maybe just capture the mood of certain characters and scenes.

Tracklisting:

1) Search and Destroy – The Stooges
2) IN EVIL HOUR – Battle Ave.
3) High & Wild – Angel Olsen
4) My War – Black Flag
5) Everything Falls Apart – Hüsker Dü
6) Saigon Shrunken Panorama – The Mountain Goats
7) Rugged Country – Japanese Breakfast
8) Meg – Hovvdy
9) Love, Come Save Me – Right Away, Great Captain!
10) I Need You To Tell Me Who I Am – John Moreland
11) Drugs To Make You Sober – Jeremiah Nelson
12) Are We Failing? – Hallelujah The Hills
13) Flaming Home – Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Frederick Squire
14) Lovers as Mirrors – Paper Bee
15) Forgetting is Believing – Nathaniel Rateliff
16) Redemption:1 (An Army Man And His Self-Discovery) – Justin Vernon

Hystopia is out now via Faber & Faber (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) and you can get it from most good bookshops. Check out the other works by David Means on his Goodreads page.

The post Hystopia – David Means appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Remember, we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, so don’t hesitate to get in touch and let you know your favourite tracks from June. Or July. Or whenever.

Tracklisting:

1) Gofer – Yucky Duster
2) The End Parts One and Two – Paper Bee
3) Pas De Deux – Brenda’s Friend
4) Mostly Homely – Exam Season
5) rosy – Long Neck
6) Cool It! – Terry vs. Tori
7) best thought – Honeyuck
8) buttery sprouts – Trace Mountains
9) Green Ennui – Flying Circles
10) Memento Mori – Jake Bellissimo
11) Same Light – Tim Lannen
12) Golden Car – Tincho
13) Can’t Take My Mind – Skyjelly
14) E.V.I.L – Medicine Boy
15) Bike Thief – Frederick Squire
16) Oh Well – Adeline Hotel
17) Offering – Loone
18) Something Profound & Meaningful – See You At Home
19) Bowl of Plums – Ben Seretan
20) Muted Colours – Chain Wallet
21) Little One – Aaron Holm
22) Fear O’ the Light – Katie Dey
23) Protracted – William Ryan Fritch
24) Dizzy – Danielle Fricke
25) Uncanny – Sister Grotto
26) Hands in Our Names – Karima Walker

The post June 2016 Roundup: A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Spooky Action at a Distance is Frederick Squire’s third album and a worthy addition to his impressive repertoire, the last of which was released five years ago (and is now available on Bandcamp). As usual things were done very much DIY, with Squire performing, recording and mixing everything himself in a small basement, and it takes just seconds for opener ‘Spill Your Lungs’ to establish there has been no change in style or quality. This is undoubtedly Frederick Squire, thanks to be to the Good Lord, the song sort of slinking and sidling with unhurried guitars as Squire sings “We’re going to chase each other around this town for nothing”. It’s one of several tracks on the album that was written a number of years ago, songs written by and about a younger man. Following track ‘Book of Love’ is quiet and reserved, backed by the warm buzz of what sounds almost like a church organ. Pattering drums eventually enter too, as the number becomes understatedly stirring, Squire’s vocals taking off beyond his usual range (“I make mistakes sometimes / I often don’t get it right”)

‘BOAT!’ is about as classic a folk song you’re ever going to hear, the deep and warm vocals perfectly suited to the atmosphere of solitude and longing, trails of electric guitar skating across the surface like an icy metaphor to support the wintry lyrics:

“I love you in the snow in the wilderness
And I love you in the snow wherever you are
But mostly I love you when you’re in the snow that’s in my arms
Because that’s where I always am”

The guitars are electrified on ‘Bike Thief’, another of the songs written around ten years ago. Squire’s vocals sound almost palpable at the centre of the song, as if they’d sink to the bottom of the music, possessing a quality or a richness that keeps everything anchored. ‘Blue’ is slow and gloomy and builds to a wonderful moment as it reaches the final refrain of “So I’m blue”, the vocals harmonising in ghostly splendour, sounding quietly transcendental. ‘Sweetest May’ begins as an acoustic folk song, before the entrance of twanged countrified guitar, while ‘Switch the Engineer’ is a reverby folk rock song which was written much more recently, and has a completely different lyrical point of view.

“Should I let myself give in and trust you
And reverse my built in sadness
A crazy horse that’s impossible to harness
We should get ourselves out of these shadows
Switch the engineer whom darkness follows
Relax and enjoy the weather
Just get old experiencing our time”

‘This Place’ is a short and sweet acoustic track about coming to terms with things as they are, written during what the blurb describes as Squire’s “current state of matrimonal harmony”, with haunted harmonised ooohs to close it out, before the album closes with the abstract and atmospheric ‘J Floor’, a wordless and reverberating outro.

You can get Spooky Action at a Distance now from the Frederick Squire Bandcamp page, and get CD and LP via Amazon.

The post Frederick Squire – Spooky Action at a Distance appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Watchful Creatures is the sort of album that is difficult to pin down as any specific genre. The opening two tracks are quite poppy, fast-paced with an upbeat tone, sparking the record to life and channeling bands like Spoon.

‘The Later Ones’ sees the album take a slower turn, with the focus shifting to Hynes’ vocals and the thumping drums. This continues through to ‘Forever, Kathleen,’ a sad song about loss that is topped off by a triumphant brass section that gives things a celebratory feeling, capturing that weird sense of melancholy and pride that constitues grief (as an aside, the general tone and themes bring to mind this Frederick Squire song). Hynes sings:

“Is this how you saw yourself now?
Showing your heartache in the dead of the night
It’s one for the past
Your life moved so fast
And I’ll never forget you, Kathleen

Tell me all the thoughts you had
My dreams don’t even touch yours I know
When I kneel down you don’t even frown
I see you and it kills me, Kathleen”

Just when you thought the album was about to settle in a folky groove, it changes once more. ‘Opinion Piece,’ my current favourite, is a slow-burner that builds up into the cathartic refrain “you had a lie for everyone,” with a collection of backing vocalists (including members of Hey Rosetta!) providing that rousing group chorus. Samples and ambient music are used in ‘One More, California’ add another dimension and create that sense of wistful longing that develops about a place you romanticise.

Overall, this is an interesting album that defies the usual categorisation, incorporating the best bits from a range of sources to create something that will both get your feet moving and your soul hurting (in a good way). Maybe Hynes’s time with other bands has helped him develop a well-rounded musical palatte?

The album is out now on Shuffling Feet Records, who are putting together quite a roster.

The post Jon Hynes – Watchful Creatures appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We had originally planned for 15 songs each but found it was too difficult to fit in all the artists we felt needed to be included and decided to go with 20 each. Luckily, HI54LOFI included some of our favourites and I think we had some of his on ours, so we helped each other out a bit.

Granted, there are far more than 40 noteworthy Canadian artists out there and there were some hard decisions. Any disappointed acts crying into their maple syrup or taking out frustrations on their teamates on the ice, please don’t despair, there is always next year.

We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making them. These songs certainly haven’t helped banish our romantic view of Canada.

Wake The Deaf side:

1.Docking Guard – Northern Primitive
2. Drop It – NEEDLES//PINS
3. Flyingshot Lake – The Flaming Moes
4. Ask Me Something – Wind & the Wild
5. Left and Leaving – The Weakerthans
6. Snow Ghosts – Paul Stewart
7. Voyageur – Doug MacNearney
8. The Future Of Tradition – Frederick Squire
9. Bruises – Dusted
10. Ben – Tyler Butler
11. Warning – Postdata
12. Margaret Downe – Aidan Knight
13. Coming Back Home – Zachary Lucky
14. Sask – Donovan Woods
15. Young Glass – Hey Rosetta!
16. Lightshow – Plants & Animals
17. And I Thank You – Pink Mountaintops
18. Cloud Of Evil – Blackout Beach
19. Sing! Captain – Handsome Furs
20. Continuous Thunder – Japandroids

HI54LOFI side:

1. Welcome To The Heart – Eamon McGrath
2. Broken Knees. – Different Skeletons
3. Sunset – Two Bicycles
4. Brook and Branch – The Weather Station (featuring Baby Eagle)
5. Skinny Ghost – HAPPY TRENDY
6. Deny, Deny, Deny – Joel Plaskett
7. You’re Cool – The Joe
8. Oh My God (It Still Means A Lot To Me) – The Wooden Sky
9. Necromancy – Jessica Jalbert
10. Scared – The Tragically Hip
11. Family Tree – Evening Hymns
12. Wind Driving Dogs – Chad VanGaalen
13. Were You In Love With Me – Andy Shauf
14. Big Bird In A Small Cage – Patrick Watson
15. I Need You Closer – LadyFace
16. Where are you? – nick everett
17. The Very Best – Mike Tod
18. Vapours – Islands
19. Sugar Mama – The Deep Dark Woods
20. Road Regrets – Dan Mangan

You can find both mixes here as a collection.

EH? – A Canadian Mixtape (Wake The Deaf Side) from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

EH? – A Canadian Mix Tape (HI54LOFI Side) from HI54LOFI on 8tracks Radio.

If anyone can think of any more Canada-themed cliches or stereotypes then please don’t hesitate to let us know for next year’s mix. Going by this collection of songs, being insanely talented might just be one more.

The post EH? – A Canadian Mixtape Complied By Wake The Deaf & HI54LOFI appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hi Tyler, hope all is well in Edmonton? We’re pretty excited about the new EP here at Wake The Deaf. How did Violence come about?

Jon, Edmonton is just fine now. Winter descends upon the city, but the true cold has not yet struck, and I explore the river valley in comfort, enjoying the snow and frost.

Violence is a collection of country songs I worked on for a few months before I went to Grande Prairie in August to play at Landisfest, which is a little festival by La Glace Lake on a bit of farmland. I stayed with the families of my friends Ashton and Courtney, a lovely couple who play music as Goose Lake. We recorded my vocals and guitar for Violence live off the floor in a shed behind Ashton’s house, then overdubbed the organ and slide and harmonies in his basement. The whole process took 13 hours. It is the first time I have let someone else record one of my albums, but the three of us had a great musical chemistry, and we ruined a lot of good takes by laughing.

Place is very important to my recordings, and I struggle to think of a better memory this summer than spending time with my friends around Grande Prairie. If you listen closely, there are all sorts of indicators of where we were and how much we are enjoying ourselves.

I’m completely illiterate musically so this may be a naive questions but how much does instrumentation influence the writing? Have you ever found a particular sound which conveys a mood and written a song around that? Or is it much more tailored to already written the lyrics? I’m thinking of in particular of ‘Waxwing’ on Winter King, where the relentless repetition and gradual quickening really puts across a sense of desperation which supports the lyrics perfectly. I guess I’m asking if the words are the cause or effect on the sound of a song.

Pairing sound with the tone of my writing is always a bit of a challenge. Sometimes an idea finds a few homes before it feels right. In my performances, delivery is always subject to narrative. Winter King was the first album I recorded live. The vocals and guitar are the same track, the same single microphone. In a song like ‘Waxwing,’ the urgency and speed are essential to the story, but not planned as such.

We used a few more microphones on Violence, but the tracks are still live. I believe great art emerges from limitation – the bleed of my voice into my guitar track, the cramped shed, the timeframe. The limitations of our setting are very much a part of the story of this record.

How complete are the narratives when you write a song? Do you get a good line that you think would be effective and build up from there? Or do you have a clearly defined story which you then to condense into the much more abstract collection of couplets and so on?

There is always an overarching narrative at the core of the song, and certain lines and images stick out in that story. I think the perfect story provides enough detail that you share the images I had in mind, but you fill in the details.

That said, Violence is also an attempt to free myself from writing too abstractly. When I wrote Winter King, I focused on developing a strong poetic voice by digging into mythology and language that was very loaded with meaning. I write in a way that makes it is easy for me to hide behind suggestion and metaphor, but I think I can write most powerfully by expressing myself clearly.

What are the biggest influences on your song writing? I guess it will be a whole host of things (including personal experience) but is there a particular medium which provides you inspiration? Do you find what you are listening to or reading at the time has a noticeable effect on what you produce?

Robert Kroetsch, who I had the honour of meeting right before he passed, remains the biggest influence on my writing. Patrick Lane is another poet I really look up to. Mary Wood is a great poet here in Edmonton and we work on a lot of writing together. But folk music is about bringing your friends’ songs with you: I sing a lot of Zach Lucky’s songs, I sang one of Mike Tod’s songs in Calgary two weeks ago, I sneak a Jom Comyn song in once in a while when he is not looking. They all write about Canada in a way that is a little different than mine, but important and beautiful.

I get the impression that many of your songs are set in an older time, some sort of simpler age. Is this how you see it? Even if you don’t envisage the songs necessarily in the past, there is a definite isolation in your lyrics, a removal from the trappings of modern society. It’s a perfect way to capture feelings and emotions, signifying intimacy through simplicity. I was recently reading an interview with the filmmaker/writer Brit Marling and Susan Sarandon where they hypothesize that any real ‘classic’ love story these days has to be written in the past as there are no longer the traditional sorts of obstacles present in a contemporary romance (I guess especially in music as writing about neurotic people with complex anxieties and so on is difficult in the relatively succinct medium of a song). I was wondering whether you consciously thought in this way? Or does your style come naturally?

I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment. I agree: this is a removal from the trappings of modern society, although not necessarily a foray into the past. That interview is very interesting: my stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

This album is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.

Brit Marling says in that interview, “the bravest thing you’re ever going to find is people deciding to be intimate with one another. I mean really intimate, not just sexually intimate.” What a fascinating and true statement. By making my characters vulnerable to each other, I think I create a strong sense of intimacy. And by displaying my own desires, not shrouding myself to the same extent behind the poetic voice, I make myself vulnerable, allow the possibility for intimacy between myself and the listener.

How difficult (or otherwise) is it to be successfully creative in modern society? I recently saw Evening Hymns play and Jonas Bonnetta was describing the making of their latest album where they basically isolated themselves in a cabin in the middle of winter for weeks. This sounds perfect but I couldn’t help wondering how people manage to do this sort of thing (not to mention month long tours and so on) around going to work and paying rent. Would you say study/employment limits your potential as a musician or a writer? Or are you glad to have something aside from music to fill your days?

I just saw Evening Hymns play here in Edmonton with Andy Shauf and Reuben and the Dark – what a great show. A packed Monday night at Wunderbar.

Art is a product of work. The creative spark and the hard work required to create art are very different processes. I am always thinking creatively, writing down lyrics as they come to me, humming melodies into my phone. But I make time to work on my art: I write daily poems, I schedule time alone to write with my guitar in hand, I practice with my band.

And as I have said, great art rises from limitation. The way the creative mind navigates obstacles either internal or external fascinates me. The constraints upon an artist – budget, time, talent – these are as much a part of art as the narrative or medium. I would rather make the most of what I have than make waste of excess.

Do you ever see yourself in a position to make a living through your art? Would you want to?

I love making music, and I will make music the rest of my life. But I want to do so in a way that is sustainable. I don’t know if music will ever provide my sole income. I don’t know if it can. There may be a point when I raise a family, buy a house, need health care: could music alone provide for me? I want to position myself so that I am still making music in 20 years, 50 years. I work full time at a university here in Edmonton and I tour on my vacations. It’s a balance that is working for me right now.

Finally, what are you listening to right now? Could you maybe give us 4 or 5 artists we should be hearing? It doesn’t matter if they formed thirty seconds or thirty years ago, whatever you are enjoying.

I listen to mostly Canadian artists: The Wooden Sky – I saw them perform at the Royal Alberta Museum recently. Fred Squire might be my favourite artist right now. Nick Everett and Mike Tod are on constant rotation lately.

And Barna Howard released a great self-titled record that I am enjoying very much. He’s from the USA, but let’s not hold it against him.

(Maythorn Live At St. Paul’s Fish Creek from Dylan Rhys Howard)

Thanks go to Tyler for putting so much time and effort into this, I think the result shows how much he though about this. Violence and Winter King are available from Tyler’s Bandcamp page. Make sure you check out the video above which is a beautiful short film by Dylan Rhys Howard and keep an eye on Cabin Songs, a new folky side of Old Ugly, that Tyler runs. I am told they will be releasing some lovely music in the new year. Also I’ve added links to all the acts he mentions in the interview so you can explore them at your leisure.

I hope you enjoy Tyler’s answers as much as I did.

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