Geordie Gordon’s third solo album River Round is a collection of love songs as intimate anthems of resilience. Friendship and romance stand off with life’s losses as Gordon weaves into his home-recorded folk music the irrepressible joys of pop—memorable verses and soulful, hard-hitting hooks—honed in his career as sideman and collaborator in acts including Islands, US Girls, Andy Shauf, and The Weather Station.

On River Round Gordon plays a small orchestra of instruments, including acoustic and electric six-string and tenor guitars, bass, mandolin, electric mandola, octave mandolin, fiddle, organ, Wurlitzer, Moog, and glockenspiel.

The title River Round cites the “round” as a form of singing in unison, a blending of voices, hinting at how this solo project is in fact a revival, a revelry of coming together. Even in the apocalyptic “All the Fires,” a song that looks frankly at the world, Gordon’s lyrics insist there’s a way through, and that way is by coming together: “I just need to see you safe by morning. Because there’s no morning without you.”

On the album’s second track, “River House” Gordon brings back to life the old, crumbling rooms of a home he moved into at 18, where so many musicians would be roommates and gather to imagine and build the artist’s hometown punk and folk scene in Guelph, Ontario. That community mourns through “Richard’s Song,” an ode to the late musician and indomitable “front man” Richard Laviolette (1982–2023), whose Sunday band practices Gordon recalls with radical tenderness. He sings to Richard, ‘We can’t rehearse for what life brings / You know you can tell me anything,’ and the lines resound as a call to nurture, through song, friendship and queer life at every beginning, end, and transition. This nurturing might be what Gordon calls “the good hurt in the music.”

Geordie Gordon is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Toronto and raised in Guelph, Ontario, where at the age of 13 he began playing in touring bands. For twenty years, he has toured with acts including Islands, US Girls, Andy Shauf, and The Weather Station. His solo project combines folk, soul, and pop in classic songs with lyrical verses and melodic, explosive hooks. His songs tell stories of coming of age, music community, and queer love.