By Will McGuirk
“a break-up and love song all at once. I’ve been an all-or-nothing person in love and someone who has mistaken chemistry for compatibility,” - Evangeline Gentle
“We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” - Blanchard, Sunglaciers
Whitehorse
By Will McGuirk
“I came across this Emily Dickinson poem and found it to be the most vivid description of an inner world I’ve ever encountered,” - Andrew Bird
“This duet playfully pulls back the curtain on a romantic proposition, exposing the inherent pragmatism in joining forces with another person,” - Jill Barber
"I let go of some swagger and embraced intimacy and joy and wonder. I hear this in the record and it makes me very happy to have made it.” - Jason Collett
Ruby Singh And The Future Ancestors
By Will McGuirk
“When I’m sad, anxious, nervous, or confused my posture gets worse, and I clench my jaw. I hold so much of my emotion in my neck and jaw.” - Charlie Houston
“When I wrote "Easy", I was thinking about a situation in which I was during a couple of years, trying to please someone without any guidance from the other side, not knowing if I was doing the right thing.” - Léonie Gray
“The pressures we feel from the outside mutate into something we perceive to be coming from within, endlessly pursuing things we don't need, or even want, while trudging through existence. But it works the other way too - misinterpreting the outside world to fit our egoistic desires.” -Evan Resnik
PUP, photo by Vanessa Heins
By Will McGuirk
"Back in 2018, when I was on the road with Alessia Cara, we went to Austin, Texas, and my dad recommended we go to this barbecue spot he had been to when he was touring there. We had a day or two off to explore, so we went. I thought of my dad while I was there, and often when I was on the road, because he's also a touring musician - we’re very similar and we're very close. I wrote this song to articulate the significance and importance of our relationship, how much I love and admire him, and our many parallels." - Georgia Harmer
“Although my Dad was a very complex human, he was very compassionate towards me, especially when I explained how the kids would tease me for being Ojibway. He’d always let me stay home with him and oftentimes we’d go to the Rez store for chips and pop; I’d get Cherry Coke or Vanilla Coke. The lyrics and song title are inspired by these memories of my childhood and of my father." - Daniel Monkman, OMBIIGIZI
“It’s a lot of me trying to articulate my own coping with existential dread, hopelessness, and what I’ve called ‘Grim Reaping’—which is to me, the idea that we are all reaping what we sow, and right now we’re sowing some pretty fucked up shit.” - Stefan Babcock, PUP
“We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” - Mathieu Blanchard, Sunglaciers
Megan Nash, photo by Gina Brass
By Will McGuirk
“Before everything went so right with this album, everything first had to go wrong, it took years, but something happens when we put our heads together. We’ve got this balance, this push-me-pull-you thing – and it works really well.” - Roland Orzabal, Tears for Fears
“‘Just Existing’ has been a long time coming. Some of these songs have been around for 2+ years, while the others are brand new. It's been a crazy process of stitching it all together, we've never approached an album like this before, it feels new.” - daysormay
“It’s probably the most vulnerable I’ve been with my lyrics so far. Not sure how it will feel to have it out in the world but I was honest with myself when I wrote it in the Fall of 2019 - heartbroken but hopeful, nervous but willing.” - Megan Nash
"My grandmother had an uncommon perception of people's needs. It wasn’t a surprise to my mother when I started having premonitions and intuitions as a child. This song felt feminine and powerful and I wanted to capture the matriarchal wisdom of many ways of knowing." - farideh
