Not long ago, the Toronto-based singer-songwriter Adam LaFramboise was half-watching a show when a stray line about business deals stopped him cold. “The character goes, ‘they slather on the honey just so they can lick it off,’” he recalls. “And it just clicked. It summed up exactly what I’d been through at the time, and right away I knew it had to be the title of the record.”

For LaFramboise, who records as Clotheslines from Hell, the phrase was more than a witty metaphor. It captured the way encouragement can quickly turn into indifference and how promises can vanish without explanation.

The year before, he had released “Open Up”, a hook-heavy single made with Matt Tavares (formerly of BADBADNOTGOOD). It was the first time he had deliberately written a pop song, and it seemed to unlock something bigger. Labels circled. Momentum built. Then it all collapsed. Contracts were offered, then withdrawn. The same people who pushed him forward told him to wait and hold off on an album.

Instead, he made Slather On The Honey. Written in the shadow of that disappointment, Clotheslines from Hell’s debut embraces contradiction: fragile and oversized, frustrated and funny, sticky with the residue of promises broken.

The record is the culmination of a journey LaFramboise began almost a decade ago. In his earliest days, he wrote songs in bands that rarely made space for them. Feeling sidelined, he began recording alone, using his phone as a studio. Early tracks, often in strange tunings, were sold as five-dollar tapes at shows and uploaded to Bandcamp as “glorified demos.” Slowly, they reached small pockets of listeners who connected with their raw intimacy. Messages trickled in from other DIY artists, kids on the internet who wanted to know what tuning he was using or who simply told him the songs inspired them. “I was just happy to have had a few messages every now and then from kids basically just saying they really liked the songs and that they thought it was inspiring,” he recalls.

On Slather On The Honey, LaFramboise wrote and produced every track, still using his phone as the main initial recording device, but then building them from layered guitars, vocals, drums, and strings before bringing in collaborators to expand the sound. Josh McIntyre (Prince Innocence) and Nate Burley (Young Clancy) added bass, keys, and production. Curtis Everett Pauley (The Life) shaped “Play Me”, “Annie”, and “Girl Music”. Tavares returned for “Drug of Choice”, with piano and synths cutting against LaFramboise’s restless arrangements. Jono Currier contributed guitar to “On Ice” and the project at large was mixed by Lars Stalfors (The Dare, Mars Volta) and mastered by Ruairi O’Flaherty.

Musically, the album is unpredictable. Songs shift tempos without warning, choruses appear once and never return and structures bend into unexpected shapes. At times, the intimacy recalls Elliott Smith. Elsewhere, the guitars channel Nirvana’s bite or dissolve into the mechanical unease of Nine Inch Nails.

Lyrically, LaFramboise writes quickly and instinctively. His words lean on sound and image rather than explanation. The result is immediate and unvarnished, alternating between frustration and humour.

“I overcrowd mixes and throw in everything I can, but when the songs get properly mixed, I realize the core was already there,” LaFramboise says.

Slather On The Honey is not the album that was supposed to be made. It is the one that had to be. A debut born from collapse, it captures Clotheslines from Hell finding a voice in the wreckage and turning it into something undeniable.