YAWN’S (JULIA MCDOUGALL) DEBUT LP, WISH I COULD’VE, OUT TODAY
WATCH / SHARE “BROKEN BABY” (MUSIC VIDEO) HERE
BUY / STREAM WISH I COULD’VE HERE
TOUR DATES BEGIN JUNE 18
Photo Credit : Myriam Strong // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
For the past several years, Julia McDougall has been holed away working on her debut record as Yawn, uniting her far-ranging sensibilities into a supercharged core of misty dream-pop and electronic haze. What’s come out of the clouds are twelve carefully crafted songs that have been developed as inspiration struck from all around her. With a composition degree from Simon Fraser University and a mainstay presence in underground venues and festivals across Western Canada, McDougall’s intricately-layered pop stylings emerge in stories of longing, nostalgia, loss, and hope.
To help celebrate today’s release of wish i could’ve, Yawn is sharing the new music video for “broken baby”, directed by Abbi Richardson and shot by Andriy Liskov. The video is “a step into an alternate reality where all of our self-deprecating thoughts and feelings are transformed into joke memes,” says McDougall. “It’s a sad-girl video about all the ways we feel that we’ve failed, about dropping every ball and being the worst versions of ourselves. What starts as an awkward show gone horribly awry leads us into a day-dream of bad thoughts and feelings which snowball into pure, uninhibited chaos. The entire dream sequence was shot in one take, and each freeze frame was carefully choreographed with prop assistants to nail the timing of each scene. The song was sped up and spliced to accommodate the memes, it took a lot of practice, patience and choreography to capture.”
WATCH / SHARE “BROKEN BABY” HERE
MORE ABOUT YAWN + WISH I COULD’VE
Primarily produced by Jo Hirabayashi (Jo Passed), wish i could’ve is a record about getting older, about losing track of dreams, and being met with feelings of futility and failure. It’s a record about wanting more but not getting it, about loving and losing people, how we move forward, how some feelings never leave us, and how more often than not in life there is no tidy resolution. “I like to write songs that pin down all the feelings that are left floating around, the ones that, even years later, we can’t really make sense of,” McDougall writes. And while many of the songs touch on heavier subject matters, there is still room for lightness and humour in her work.
WATCH / SHARE “HELP MYSELF” HERE
LISTEN / SHARE “COLOURED LIGHTS” HERE
wish i could’ve is a record that was made to make you simultaneously laugh, cry, sway and dance and it holds a universality that reaches out and holds the listener’s hand. Amongst this panorama of emotion is McDougall’s distinct voice, laid out across Yawn’s spectrum of melodies as the melancholic heart of the project. With cues from Beach House, Haim, Mitski and Caroline Polacheck, Yawn’s sound and vision will linger with you like fog on a spring morning, lifting with the heat of the sun to reveal the buds finally opening.
BUY / STREAM WISH I COULD’VE HERE
TOUR DATES
Jun 18 - Cumberland, BC - The Green Room
Jun 19 - Nanaimo, BC - The Vault
Jun 21 - Vancouver, BC - Green Auto
Jun 27 - Wells, BC - Artswells
WISH I COULD’VE TRACKLIST
01 help myself
02 broken baby
03 coloured light
04 wish i could’ve
05 you & i
06 let it all go
07 i deserve better
08 wading in the water
09 back in my head
10 world is burning
11 wasting time
12 take your time
