Humanhood Out Now

Release day for Humanhood, and a deep dive into the making of the record.

Today is the release day for Humanhood, my seventh album.

This album was a long and winding labour of love. I’ve never worked so hard on a record, putting so much intention and thought and care into every note, every sound, every EQ choice, every shift in the focus and feeling of this album. I really intend it to be an album, meant to be listened to as a whole, from front to back. It tells a story and it also makes the most sense in itself when it’s all together. It’s such an ambitious record and I’m so proud of it, so proud of how wild and strange it is, how many things it says that I didn’t know how to say, all the beauty on it, all the intensity, all the texture and colour, how it manages to be this cinematic widescreen record that goes from dense to open to loud to silent. I'm so proud of it.

Something I love about this record too is how much I can really hear the spirit of each musician who plays on it. I have so much to say about what this album means and what I hope it says to the world, but I wanted to take this newsletter to shine a light on the incredible musicians and collaborators who made this album what it is.

This record was primarily recorded in two sessions at Canterbury Studios in Toronto. I put together a six piece band - Kieran Adams, Philippe Melanson, Ben Boye, Ben Whiteley, Karen Ng, and myself - and then we went in raw, having only lightly rehearsed the songs ahead. I wanted to be rolling in those moments of discovery, when musicians are finding arrangements in real time, and you capture the magic of that falling into place. We really caught that - these sessions led to a mountain of material, way more than could fit on one album - and all of these cinematic, wild, unusual moments with sax and perc and synth and piano all rolling around against each other.

I credit this band with a lot; they really shaped the music in such a big way, and everyone’s musical spirit is so indelibly a part of this record.

Kieran Adams on drums is a force; his time is so insanely good, and he can hold us all together with perfect metronomic time while also having the song feel so powerful and driving. Kieran is also an amazing producer and DJ and composer, and I knew his mind would be the right one to find the rhythms to make the songs transcend themselves. Kieran’s drumming was a huge part of the shift in sound for TWS on Ignorance, and I was so glad he came back for this record.

Phil Melanson is also a once in a lifetime drummer; with this totally insane sense of pocket and feel. No-one plays like him. On this record, he was in his booth riffing on percussion the whole time, a constant stream of rhythmic ideas that interplay and weave around Kieran’s drumming, creating this braided complexity in the rhythm of this record. He also plays a lot of the electronic drums on the record, setting up this juxtaposition between organic / synthetic that I wanted to explore, and he also played all the drums on Body Moves, which was re-recorded (mostly) after the fact. The rhythm of this album is so complex, and that is the sound of Kieran and Phil playing off each other and creating together.

Ben Whiteley is the backbone of this band, having played with me since the first tour for Loyalty. He has this understanding of the folk / singer songwriter world I’m coming from, while also having jazz training, and also understanding the new wave instinct too. This band and this album is one of contrasts; wildly different energies held together, I think, by Ben’s playing at the centre of it. He’s the glue. He’s also a fantastic player, intuitive and thoughtful, and I particularly love his creative, inventive bass playing on Body Moves. Ben also did a lot of recording and editing on the record, particularly on Body Moves (which we re-recorded at his little studio space) and also on a lot of the other songs that aren’t on the record. He did a lot of listening of all kinds - to songs, to creative crises, and talked me off many a creative cliff. This record would not be what it was if Ben hadn't been a part of it.

Karen Ng played saxophone, clarinet, and flute. She's such a beautiful, unusual musician - whenever I see her play, whether solo, improvising, or with a group, she does something that takes my breath away. I just always feel so much when she plays. She’s a fountain of creativity, just endlessly coming up with new riffs and melodies, improvising entirely new approaches to the songs on every take. I love her conversational, vivid, wandering sax all over Humanhood and Irreversible, and the beautiful clarinet solo in Sewing - Karen's presence is so important to this record and I can't imagine it without her.

I met Ben Boye back in 2016, when I was opening for Ryley Walker in Europe and he was in Ryley’s band. I had never seen someone play keys like that - his approach to the pianet was so surprising and charismatic, I went home and bought a pianet myself. Ben played on the S/T record in 2018, and he’s someone I kept running into around the world. He played piano on the record - he’s the one playing on ‘Sewing’ - those gorgeous voicings and hanging notes are him. He also played pianet, wurlitzer, and a lot of hydrasynth, an unusual synthesizer that he draws all sorts of strange, complex, constantly shifting sounds from. The hydra quickly became an essential part of the record - it’s literally all over it -and something I can’t imagine the record without.

Marcus Paquin came down to Toronto to run the session at Canterbury with me, and co-produce the record. He is a master at directing traffic and helping such a complex big session happen, with all the communication and listening and emotional calm that requires. He also played a lot of percussion on the record, and some hydra - those overwhelming swells on Irreversible Damage are him. He helped make sense of and edit the songs after the fact, in particular doing a lot of shaping on Window and Mirror and Irreversible Damage. I made Ignorance with Marcus and it was really good to have him back.

The record was recorded primarily at Canterbury Studios. Recording at Canterbury Studios is like a five star vacation for those of us with sensitive ears. Everything is recorded immaculately by resident engineer Julian Decorte, who I have total faith in at this point. I walk in there and instantly feel my shoulders drop, with the assurance of knowing everything will be good. I’ve made three records at Canterbury now - Ignorance, How Is It, and Humanhood. That blue painted room is an oasis for creativity for me, and has been the place where I’ve learned to work at a totally new level in terms of production and creation.

Sam Amidon was passing through Toronto a couple months after the recording was through, and I brought him in to play fiddle and banjo. It was really important to me to have these instruments represented on the record, and it was something I planned from the beginning - initially hoping even to include Sam on the initial tracking sessions.There is a fierce, driving, wild quality inherent in the folk music I’m drawn to, and it’s this quality Sam brings to everything he touches. I knew the fire in his playing would show up on the record, and it did.

James Elkington played lead guitar from his home studio in Chicago, and he made the songs come to life. Lead guitar is a sound that can really take you anywhere, in terms of genre and references; certain guitar tones can remind you of specific recordings in a way that sometimes is desirable, sometimes not. I knew that Jim would approach the lead guitar differently than anyone else would, because he comes from a British folk fingerstyle playing tradition; and even when he’s playing those powerful riffs on Neon Signs, it’s totally different than an American style of playing. I love the sneaky, winding riffs he draped around the songs, and it’s another element that made the record what it is.

Joseph Shabason is an ambient artist and producer based in Toronto. He helped make the first (and only) demo I made for this record, months before we started, a demo which went a long way towards trying out a sound and feeling I ended up exploring on the record. I went into his studio a few times after tracking; he played Juno and Moog and helped create the indelible synth wave that makes Sewing so powerful.

Drew Jurecka played strings on Neon and Mirror, tracking all the parts on his violin and octave violin from his studio while I watched. He also made a tape loop out of some harmonic string sounds, which played backwards became the sound that closes out Mirror.

Finally, Christine Bougie and Thom Gill both played a few indelible licks; Christine the drifting lap steel that underlies the hydra synth in Lonely, Thom the little scattered blooms of dissonance on Body.

This record would not be what it is without the mixing of Joseph Lorge. Mixing this record was really complex; in part because there is just so much on it, so many sounds, so many tracks of percussion, so many instruments, but also because the album really needed to create its own sound that isn’t reminiscent of any particular genre. Walking that line in terms of reverbs and compressors and sounds was something that took a lot of finessing. Joseph really took his time with it, often using analog approaches to mix in a really deep, thoughtful, meticulous way. He also took some real creative liberties; using a little tape machine to warp the piano at the start of Mirror and the perc on Humanhood. The record is so big and cinematic and has so many little subtle shifts in focus on story in no small part because of the care Joseph took mixing it.

My time in LA mixing ended up being yet another chapter of creation on the record, where I ended up re-recording nearly all the lead vocals, and doing yet more editing and production that shaped the songs in the final stages. It was also an idyll, a time away, a time when I feel like I really found the heart of the record and came to understand what it was trying to be.

The album was mastered by Joao Carvalho - very beautifully. And the Atmos mix was done by Howie Beck. Atmos mixing is still a new form, but if you have gear to listen that way, I strongly recommend it. This album is so big and there’s so many sounds that we almost couldn’t fit into a stereo signal; the Atmos mix lets the record stretch out and be heard in full. Howie also did such a deep thoughtful job, with a lot of care taken on every decision.

Jeff Bierk shot the photos that make up the album art. Jeff has long used photos printed on fabric in his art practice, and knowing his work, I was convinced that had to be the central concept for the cover. I also knew that I wanted stone and gritty texture to be part of the imagery; I think of the album as this contrast between textured and watery. So we went out over and over again to a park in Etobicoke, shooting on a point sticking out into Lake Ontario. We got a lot of images which we then printed on large blankets and brought back out to the same spot to rephotograph. The composition of the cover was one of those perfectly serendipitous moments; the way the three fabric selves happened to fall in that moment, and me draped in them as I was. Shooting day for night, as Jeff often does, there is this mysterious mythical feel; it feels like a ritual, a visual metaphor, and a painting all at once. The cover captures the meaning of the record - the repeating motifs of fabric, sewing, undulation, the sort of rippling feeling of identity, everything that the cover needed to say somehow summed up in this one image. Jeff is an incredible artist and photographer and I felt so lucky to work with him again.

The album design was done by Jesse Osborne Lanthier, a Montreal based designer. I wanted the writing to be scribbled, scrawled; to have this human, imperfect feeling. Jesse went all out, doing not just the font based work but all of the little illustrations that are all over the jacket. There’s scrawled crayon on the back and all of these textural pieces that draw the album design together with the intention and the photos; he really went above and beyond.

Making this album was a gift. I'm so glad it's finally out to be heard in full.