Saskatoon songsmith Ellen Froese’s latest record, Solitary Songs, finds her meditating on a strange chapter of her life. “It’s been a weird year—lots of life changes, maybe some ego-death,” she says. Between an ADHD diagnosis and cutting back on some vices, her perspective—as a musician, a lover, a human being—has changed.

The follow up to 2022’s For Each Flower Growing (produced with the Sheepdogs’ Sam Corbett), Solitary Songs showcases Froese singing songs that sound like dusted-off country classics with wry, down-to-earth lyricism. One moment, Froese is confessing, “I’m scared of getting old / But more than that, I’m scared of living without your love”; the next, she’s reeling from a false-start fling, ”stray cattin’ along” with a freshly purchased “strawberry watermelon turbo-powered vape.” There are no sacred cows in Froese’s world, with blunt humour meeting heartache while the band plays on.

“This record is the outcome of facing non-stop anxiety with songwriting,” Froese says. “I was oscillating back and forth between feeling stuck and feeling like, ‘fuck it, I need to zoom out and have some fun.’” This tension makes Solitary Songs captivating; Froese, chastises herself for overcomplicating things, even if it may be for self-preservation, singing “Don’t look hard, Ellen.” But she does look hard, turning over the complications—the ex-lover, the rough weather, the lonely hotel bed—meditating on her deeper desires; as her honeyed voice sings, “What I seek now is a methodology for peacefulness between my heart and mind.”

Breaking down the role ADHD has played in her life, Froese’s fight against “the damn dopamine hunt” is tracked across Solitary Songs. “If something is intriguing to me, it becomes my entire reality for that time,” Froese explains. While Froese excels at self-deprecatingly depicting her own fixations (she muses at one point, “I’m thinkin’ and I’m drinkin’ up ways to make you mine”), Froese also stuns with descriptions of the bittersweet come down after the frenetic high (as when she sings, “that candle now is dripping / Wax hardens round the moon / So blow it out for broken dreams / Light one for solitude”).

Album highlight “Windy Was The Weather” finds Froese tossed and turned by the fickleness of connection. Over bittersweet strums, Froese recalls tryst with a “Siren of Beauty.” Exhibiting a wisdom far beyond her years, Froese laments the volatility of our bodies and minds, with the caveat that there is some pleasure in the uncertainty, of “a rose, both thorny and soft on my neck.” Whipping up a gust of strings and horns, this stirring waltz feels as timeless as autumn itself.

Throughout Solitary Songs, Froese is slyly moving towards self-acceptance. On “Practicing My Wink,” Froese relays her tongue-in-cheek quest to perfect the flirtatious move (it’s “harder to do than you think”!). Disarming anxiety with goofiness, Froese playfully twisting her goal of being super cool and likeable into an ode to self-discovery through trust and friendship. Froese knows that, regardless of what the mirror dictates, “I got my pals and they know all the about / The way that I always have been.”

Friendship is at the heart of Solitary Songs, which sounds like how it was made: a big hangout with friends, trying to make one another smile. Recorded at RecHall studios in Saskatoon, Solitary Songs was created through jubilant, off-the-cuff collaboration, with the band riffing arrangements while Froese penned new verses in the control room.

At this point in her career—with 4 full-length albums and many international tours under her belt—Solitary Songs showcases Froese digging for the feeling of “just making music for the joy of it, like when I was a kid.“ And as far as quitting the dopamine rush and finding self-acceptance goes? ‘I guess the journey up to wellness has peaks and valleys, but it does start to level out,” Froese muses. Indeed, Solitary Songs sees Froese’s flirting with self-acceptance while figuring things out; trying to be “happy in the confidence of a solitary song,” and getting your friends on board for some cheeky country-folk tunes. And nobody does those quite like Ellen Froese.