WATCH / SHARE “ARE WE STILL IN LOVE?” HERE
NEW LP, SOFT FOCUS FUTURES, OUT NOW VIA ACRONYM RECORDS
BUY / STREAM SOFT FOCUS FUTURES HERE
“Nash is clearly a fan of Williams, and she was an excellent fit to introduce her, particularly with a standout performance of “Are We Still in Love?” that touches on vanishing Saskatchewan small towns.” Saskatoon Star Phoenix, on Megan Nash’s opening performance for Lucinda Williams
“Bluesy and emotionally evocative, Nash drives through the 10 tracks with rich, powerhouse vocals that wrap their arms around listeners. Lyrically masterful, Soft Focus Futures harkens back to Elizabeth Smart's classic novel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.” Exclaim! On ‘Soft Focus Futures’
Today, Megan Nash (She / They) is sharing the new video for “Are We Still In Love?” from their most recent LP, Soft Focus Futures. “Are We Still in Love?” is a song about change. When you sell the farm, you’re not only changing professions, you’re changing your way of life. “Growing up, I always heard stories of what things used to be like,” says Nash. “More family farms, packed hall dances, fowl suppers so big that my folks would complain about the lack of elbow room. The verses I left vague to reflect numerous towns, villages, hamlets, etc. This could be anywhere.
“I found myself going through a divorce in a ghost town; a town that used to be larger, a love that used to be full. This song and music video draws the parallels between losing your way of life and losing your love. It’s a song for the lonely and my own… tribute if you will, to the little farm I was raised on, my high school graduating class of 10, and to every abandoned farmhouse on the prairie horizon.
“A wedding dress. Something I never thought I would buy but when I did, I treated myself. You usually plan on only wearing it once but after writing this song during the crumbling of my marriage, it felt appropriate to me to give it one more wear. I wanted to make a one take music video for this song that was simple, emotional, and heartfelt. Rob White from Hot Tag Films made the visions in my mind unfold on the screen. I made this music video with good friends on a hot prairie day. I hope you enjoy it.”
WATCH / SHARE “ARE WE STILL IN LOVE?” HERE
BUY / STREAM SOFT FOCUS FUTURES HERE
After performing at Regina Folk Festival this past weekend, Megan will next hit the stage at Americana Fest in Nashville and BreakOut West in Calgary in September. Full tour dates are below.
MORE ABOUT SOFT FOCUS FUTURES
Throughout their self-produced sophomore album Soft Focus Futures, Megan Nash mines the death of her marriage for clues that could decode its demise and set her on a path toward some sort of stability in self. In the process, they achieve a distillation of heartache and its attendant, all-consuming power that arrives like a 100-year flood in blossoming crescendos buoyed by precise poetry evoking unnatural disasters, the tyranny of silence, old dogs, and the isolation of life in the country. The blue hues, unsteady triumph, and emotional grandeur of Soft Focus Futures earns a spiritual kinship with author Elizabeth Smart’s masterpiece, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, about Smart’s affair with George Barker. “The water submerges and blends, but I am not dead,” Smart writes about grief and love. “O I am not dead. I am under the sea. The entire sea is on top of me.”
WATCH AND SHARE “MY OWN HEART” LYRIC VIDEO
After “Table For One” sets a scene of quiet devastation with a sparse acoustic guitar strum, the slow-building tidal wave of “Artifact” reveals the loneliness of separation’s aftermath: ‘Our love is an island where we used to live,’ Nash sings over the song’s dreamy wash. ‘It was swallowed by the ocean.’ With “My Own Heart”, she seeks a cosmos-sized space in which she’s able to learn to be alone with herself; the more grounded, guitar-fuelled “Coffee” hammers home the less desirable realities of that isolation, like bad dates and the fear that that accompanies being on your own in a creaky old house. With incisive, earthy verse, Nash invokes the particularities of their Prairie home, parsing through childhood memories of her family’s small farm and searching for her place in that lineage with “Another Silent Night”, while using the vernacular of small-town gossip to paint a lonesome rural scene on “Are We Still In Love?” The sonic scope of “Chew Quietly/Clean Slate” looms vast over anxieties about meeting someone new, deploying epic, frenzied breakdowns to communicate inner turmoil. As the curtain closes, Nash is careful to avoid claiming resolution or closure—the nature of those concepts are fickle at best—and instead chooses to let her heart beat out ‘the poisonous rhythm of the truth.’ But the silence lingering in the exhales intertwined at the end of “Table For One (Reprise)” begins to, maybe, carve out space once again for a great flood of love.
WATCH / SHARE “QUIET” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “COFFEE” HERE
Soft Focus Futures was released on what would’ve been the fourth anniversary of her wedding — November 3, 2021. To build the album’s lush soundscapes, Nash turned to their long-time musical co-conspirators the Best of Intentions, composed of talented multi-instrumentalists Dana Rempel, Darnell Stewart, and Tanner Wilhelm Hale. Additional contributions feature Brady Frank, Dalton Lam, Digawolf, Stacy Tinant, Jenna Nash, Logan Amon, and Megan’s wizened dog Shiloh, to whom she dedicates a poem in the liner notes of the album. Soft Focus Futures was officially engineered by Dana Rempel, but in most cases, because of pandemic restrictions, each contributing player individually recorded their own parts in a collective act of camaraderie that testifies to the closeness of those involved and their faith in the quality of Nash’s work. Despite the distance, Soft Focus Futures is a cohesive creation that sounds as though it was made in the presence of dear friends so close they could breathe on one another. The album was mixed and mastered by Justin Bender at Divergent Sounds Studio.
WATCH / SHARE “ARTIFACT” HERE
Nash, who is non-binary and an unabashed Scorpio - uses both she and they pronouns and lives on Treaty 4 Territory. They’ve won and been nominated for numerous awards, including a 2019 JUNO Award nomination for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year for Seeker and a 2021 Best of Moose Jaw Award for Best Musical Artist. The recognition back home is in no small part due to her long and winding history of hitting the road, where she’s done international showcases in the United States, the UK, Germany, and Estonia on top of countless gigs in Canada’s small towns and sprawling metropolises. With everyone’s health top of mind on the touring schedule to come, rest assured you’ll be able to see them—and hear Soft Focus Futures live—the minute she’s able to safely hit your town.
WATCH / SHARE “CHEW QUIETLY / CLEAN SLATE” HERE
BUY / STREAM SOFT FOCUS FUTURES HERE
TOUR DATES
Sep 13-17 - Nashville, TN - AmericanaFest
Sept 28 - Oct 2 - Calgary, AB - BreakOut West
Oct 29 - Moose Jaw, SK - Mae Wilson Theatre
Dec 10 - Regina, SK - Conexus Arts Centre w/ Regina Symphony Orchestra
Photo Credit : Aaron Sinclair // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES