GORD DOWNIE AND BOB ROCK RELEASE THE RAVEN AND THE RED-TAILED HAWK

THREE SONG COLLECTION GIVES A SNEAK PEAK AT THE ICONIC DUO’S LONG MYTHOLOGIZED COLLABORATIVE ALBUM

LISTEN & SHARE "THE RAVEN AND THE RED-TAILED HAWK" HERE
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Today, Gord Downie, the iconic frontman of The Tragically Hip, and Bob Rock, the legendary producer perhaps best known for Metallica’s Black Album, together share The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk – the second missive of their long mythologized collaboration. The three-track digital collection is led by the eponymous song, “The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk,” a rave-up rocker brimming with chiming guitars, galloping drums, and a combustive chorus that underlines the pair’s affinity for pop punk abandon, heard before in The Tragically Hip’s “Fireworks,” or Rock’s work with The Cult and in The Payolas. Steeped in Downie lore, delivered with his unparalleled expression – images of the raven "round the housefire's afterglow," and parking lot skipping stones – "The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk" instills hope, with a picture perfect refrain of resilience landed from up above, when needed most: "Some days, I can’t do it/ Sometimes I just can't do it/ The only way around is through it." 

"'The Raven And The Red Tailed Hawk' was the first song that Gord and I completed," says Rock, recollecting the recording sessions that began in 2009. "It was a special moment for both of us, as at that point… we saw the future!" 

More than a decade in the making, the long mythologized collaboration was recently introduced with the single "Lustre Parfait," the title track to a new album that will be released May 5, 2023 via Arts & Crafts. Inspired by their brotherhood in rock n’ roll, the fourteen songs that make up Lustre Parfait are electrified and resplendent, a deep dedication of reverence to the magnitude of music itself.

LISTEN & SHARE "THE RAVEN AND THE RED-TAILED HAWK" HERE

Downie and Rock’s collaboration began when they first worked together on The Tragically Hip's World Container (2006) and We Are The Same (2009). It was after the second outing that Downie asked if Rock had music he could write lyrics for. The sonic spaces that Rock would provide led Downie into the depths of his notebooks, armed with the musical clues to find the brilliance mapped therein. On “Lustre Parfait,” charged the full strength of his spirit and the magic of collaboration, Gord tugs on the heartstrings of the mind, with such perfection: ‘All I want/ All I wish/ Is for a heart I can give/ First word/ To final wish/ A heart I can give.’ 

Compared to the raw intimacy of Downie’s posthumous solo releases – 2017’s letter to loved ones Introduce Yerelf, and 2020’s ghostly goodbye Away Is Mine – this glimpse of Lustre Parfait suggests a gift of unbridled energy from one of Canada’s most eternally cherished voices. The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk is a rallying cry from Gord that rings loud and clear: the author of our life’s soundtrack, in the pocket of a gleaming rock band, relentless, lit up by the risk of experimentation.

Bob Rock says: “First and foremost Gord was my friend, and having the opportunity to work with him on these songs was one of the biggest highlights of my professional life. I am grateful that I got to witness his genius in such close proximity.”   

Words by Gord Downie and music by Bob Rock – the fireworks in that statement alone reverberate vastly. Contributing guitars, keyboards, and percussion, the multi-platinum-selling, Grammy Award and JUNO Award-winning, Canadian Hall of Fame-inducted Rock inspires indelible performances from Downie with his vibrant musical imagination and deft production touch. Renowned for a stunning and diverse discography that ranges from Motley Crüe to Michael Bublé, Rock ignites electric melodies of rock n’ roll grandeur beneath Downie’s peerless lyricism. Flanked by co-producers Jamey Koch and Adam Greenholtz, Rock leads a cast of contributing musicians that intuit the depth of his ideas, emulating the pomp and bombast of The Rolling Stones or the earth-shocking cacophony of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with profound perspective. 

WATCH & SHARE "LUSTRE PARFAIT" HERE

The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk is out now as a three-song digital collection via Arts & Crafts, with the recently released single “Lustre Parfait” and b-side “Is There Nowhere,” a brooding symphonic creation marked by Downie’s tense interplay featuring vocalist Ché Dorval. More details on the album soon to follow.

Photo Credit: Gordon Hawkins / Austin Nelson // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

MORE ABOUT GORD DOWNIE
Gord Downie is the late lead singer and songwriter of rock giants The Tragically Hip. Over more than thirty years and across fourteen studio albums, Downie and his band of brothers built a legacy as the essential Canadian rock band. With seven solo albums to his name, Downie’s own music refutes definition, renowned for its adventurous poetry, collaboration, elastic composition, and Gord’s singular wail. Downie presented Secret Path in 2016, a multimedia project helping to bring crucial awareness to Indigenous reconciliation in Canada. The Tragically Hip performed their final national tour earlier that summer, leaving an indelible mark on the more than twelve million fans that watched the historic farewell concert, televised from the band’s hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Downie passed away on October 17, 2017. In memoriam, The New York Times stated that Downie has “no parallel in the United States. Imagine Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Michael Stipe combined into one sensitive, oblique, poet-philosopher, and you’re getting close.”

MORE ABOUT BOB ROCK
Robert Jens Rock, record producer, engineer, guitarist, and songwriter first found success as a core member of the Vancouver punk/new wave/pop band Payola$ before going on to produce top-selling albums by timeless artists such as The Cult, Mötley Crüe, Metallica, Bon Jovi, Our Lady Peace, Simple Plan, Michael Bublé and many others. Known for his robust, radio-friendly production touch, and the intuition to play to an artist’s character and strengths, Rock has produced or engineered some of the most commercially-successful rock records of all time. He won a Grammy Award, multiple JUNO Awards, and has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Photo Credit: Mik Rock // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

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LIVING HOUR SHARE NEW VIDEO, TOUR DATES CONTINUE THIS WEEK

WATCH / SHARE “HOLD ME IN YOUR MIND” HERE

LIVING HOUR’S SOMEDAY IS TODAY, OUT NOW VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES CONTINUE NOVEMBER 24

BUY / STREAM SOMEDAY IS TODAY HERE

“Living Hour offer a soundtrack to malaise that feels both timeless and timely.” - Pitchfork 

“Someday is Today is a beautiful meditation.” - Winnipeg Free Press

“Hazy, widescreen pop with emotive smoky vocals” – Brooklyn Vegan

“Luxuriating in languid textures—and balancing stormy swells with long stretches of gossamer softness — Someday Is Today is ideal for gentle swaying and sunbeam dozing.” - Exclaim!

“Living Hour covers a wide swath of influences with grace while never sounding like anybody but itself.  Someday Is Today leaves the listener with butterflies in the stomach” - The Manitoban



“Winnipeg rockers Living Hour dream big with grandiose, all-encompassing shoegaze that stretches to the ends of the earth...With gauzy guitar hooks and wide-open, drifting vocals, Living Hour wear their heart on their sleeve. It is equal parts scuzzy noise and charming dream-pop.” – Stereogum

“Living Hour have captured the rawness of their surroundings and committed it to wax, forging an album of delicate human connection and melancholic vulnerability.” - Northern Transmissions

Photo Credit : Adam Kelly // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Recently returned from a road trip throughout Canada and the US supporting their new record, Someday Is Today, out now via Next Door Records, Winnipeg’s Living Hour will head out again for a run of dates that begins in their hometown before hitting the West Coast. Full tour dates can be found below.

Today, they are also sharing the new video for “Hold Me In Your Mind” from director Ryan Steel and cinematographer Jesse De Rocquigney. The track is about “the mystery of connectivity,” says vocalist Sam Sarty. “Human to human and all the inner biological electricity involved, human to technology to human and the electricity involved there. Also about everything else in between that we cannot perceive that’s at work, like when you think about someone out of nowhere so deeply and intensely while driving, and get a text from them, or see them walking down the street.”

“A brain worm song that starts as you’re walking home from a date’s house. A meditation on being perceived by people and technology. Feeling your small part in the massive web that is an interconnected ecosystem. You and your date, you and your cell phone, you and yourself, moving across the bridge. The psychic coincidences of thinking of someone while driving so deeply and intensely, then getting a text from them or seeing them cross the street. Thinking hard about someone, hoping your thoughts will affect the person you are thinking so they also think about you. Psychic connection." 

Of the video Sarty says, "first frost, walking around, remembering what it feels like again. Meditation on cars and security cameras, buildings and their window materials as it gets dark at 5pm. Finding the light, still walking and letting the loops inside my mind play out while staring into car head beams. Ryan and Jesse came along with me to shoot in some places around Winnipeg, reflection of the Red River, an old high school football field, buildings around. We collaborated on how the shots would look, a solo person enduring the day as it fades out into passing cars, floating away on one beam of light to the next."

WATCH / SHARE “HOLD ME IN YOUR MIND” HERE

MORE ABOUT SOMEDAY IS TODAY 
Based in Winnipeg, an “inland island that floats on infinite prairie ground,” Living Hour has always been a band that thrived in seclusion. Suspended in the middle of a continent, Winnipeg is a place of cycles and extremes and the contrast of its seasons means the group is constantly adapting and making the most of what lies around them. Helping to foster a thriving local community, and taking inspiration from the faces and places of their hometown, the band have always been motivated by the belief that their own music only gets more interesting when it includes other voices.

For their new album, Someday Is Today, the band followed this vein of collaboration even further, calling upon friends and peers from near and far to impart their talents on the ideas the band had been harvesting. The fruit of this labour is Someday Is Today, the band’s third full-length effort and the much-anticipated follow-up to their 2019 Softer Faces LP, acclaimed by the likes of NPR, Stereogum, Paste, Vice, Bandcamp, and more.

WATCH / SHARE “FEELINGS MEETING” FT. JAY SOM

Living Hour’s core remains built around founding members Gilad Carroll (Guitar/Vocals), Adam Soloway (Guitar/Vocals), and Sam Sarty (Bassist/Keyboardist/Vocalist), who’ve been writing together since 2014, and Brett Ticzon (Bass/Keys/Drums), who joined the band in 2018. On Someday Is Today, the group’s sound is collaborated with a variety of drummer friends including Jason Tait (The Weakerthans, Bahamas, Broken Social Scene). The group’s sound is fleshed out further with the help of album’s three producers: Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Chastity Belt), Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail, The Drums), and Samur Khouja (Cate le Bon, Deerhunter, Regina Spektor) all of whom impart their own backgrounds on the album’s finished glow. 

Composed of eleven new songs, Someday Is Today is Living Hour at their most pensive and longing. The vulnerable lyrics are brought beautifully to life by lush and generous instrumentation that winds its way through the album. It was recorded over seven straight days during the dark depths of a Manitoba winter, with the band cocooned in the sounds they were making as the temperature hit -30 outside the door. “It’s a grind, but it’s incredibly challenging in a frustratingly beautiful kinda way,” Sarty says of their local environment. “It pushes you to keep going, to keep finding glimmers to move forward. A silver piece of wrapper sticking out a snowbank becomes your altar. The big grey sky gets me giddy.”

WATCH / SHARE “NO BODY” HERE

The recording process of Someday is Today wrapped up months of disjointed, electronic correspondence between the band members, all of whom spent 2020 in greater seclusion than they were accustomed to, recording ideas into phones and computers before sharing them with each other via zoom calls. The demos were built up remotely, piece-by-piece, in great contrast to the in-person rehearsals that had been so fundamental to their previous work.

This fractured breed of creativity naturally drifted into the songs themselves. Sam Sarty’s lyrics – pulled from journals, iPhone notes, and napkin scribbles – come suffused with reflections on disassociation, human interactions with technology, and a poignant contemplation of life in liminal spaces. The album’s cover artwork ties into these themes, with a vulnerable belly button peeking out from a pair of jeans. 

Musically, the band’s sound grows to warm and earthy new perimeters on Someday Is Today. There’s the chugging brilliance of “Feelings Meeting” a collaboration with Jay Som, which immediately redefines the band’s capabilities. A rousing encapsulation of the album’s moods, it sways woozily between Sarty’s soothing voice and heavy instrumental breaks, the quiet/loud dynamics shift the tempo unexpectedly from crushing highs to breathy lows. 

WATCH / SHARE “MIDDLE NAME” HERE

Elsewhere, “No Body” speaks directly to dissociation. Sarty’s fragile voice is backed by a slow ripple of percussion, describing a brooding, dark mood that drifts through a restaurant room by day with its faded laminate menus and faceless customers. “I’m staring at the sugar cube, it always has reminded me of you in softer hues,” Sarty sings with palpable despondency. A subtle juxtaposition, “Miss Miss Miss” showcases the band’s colourful experimental workings, the track offering a playful layering of their sound where clipped beats and splashes of synth conjure a languid groove that balances the emotional weight of the record.

The first Living Hour album to share lead vocals across different songs, Someday Is Today thrives by keeping just enough connection across its various sonic and thematic palettes for the whole thing to feel like one cohesive world. Whether it’s the album’s soft and gorgeous harmonies or the captured sound of wind tubes being swung above their heads, the songs here feel bound by something bigger than themselves; an energy that flourished in spite of it all, a human connection that grips just strongly enough even when pushed to its frayed, unreachable extremes. - Tom Johnson

WATCH / SHARE “MISS MISS MISS” HERE

TOUR DATES
Nov 24 - Winnipeg @ WECC
Nov 29 - San Diego @ Public Square
Nov 30 - Long Beach @ Alex's Bar
Dec 1 - Los Angeles @ Resident
Dec 3 - San Francisco @ Bottom Of The Hill
Dec 4 - Sacramento @ The Starlet Room
Dec 5 - Reno @ Holland Project
Dec 7 - Portland @ Doug Fir Lounge *
Dec 8 - Victoria @ Lucky Bar
Dec 9 - Vancouver @ Red Gate *
Dec 10 - Seattle @ The Vera Project *
* supporting Dear Nora 

LIVING HOUR IS
Sam Sarty (she/her)

Gil Carroll (he/him)

Adam Soloway (he/him)

Brett Ticzon (he/him)

PRAISE FOR LIVING HOUR

"Slowdive just returned, but shoegaze music was already in good hands with Living Hour." –  NPR

“Part dream-pop opus, part dust-covered Winnipeg melodrama, Living Hour’s scintillating new record is their most fully-realised body of work; a shimmering and radiant next-step that finds the band exploring whole new worlds.” – Gold Flake Paint

“Living Hour’s alterations of genre tropes are unorthodox but unassuming; the buoyant horns fit comfortably within the sound. Sarty’s voice is pretty enough for her heaviest lyrics to slip by a distracted listener…. but listen more closely, and [Softer Faces] will surprise you with its depth.” – Bandcamp Daily

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JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS UNVEILS PIANO ONLY VERSION OF “OUESSANT”

LISTEN / SHARE / BUY “OUESSANT (PIANO)” HERE

AUBADES, THE POST-CLASSICAL ICON’S FIRST ENSEMBLE RECORD,
OUT NOW VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE

PERFORMS IN TORONTO ON JANUARY 20 AT KOERNER HALL FOR 21 C MUSIC FESTIVAL

“From its opening notes, it whisks listeners away. On the new album from the esteemed post-classical pianist, Blais is in perpetual bloom, moved by life's beauty and nature's song.” - Exclaim!

“...aubades finds Blais conducting a 12-person ensemble, filling in his beautiful piano melodies with lush instrumentation that brings his music to new heights.” - CBC MUSIC

“The first new album from the post-classical Quebec pianist since 2019′s soundtrack for Xavier Dolan’s Matthias et Maxime is a serene, uplifting outing done in major keys. Sounds like springtime.” - The Globe and Mail

Photo Credit : John Londono  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Fresh off winning the Best International Indie Music Video at the UKMVA and Best Instrumental Album at L'ADSIQ, celebrated composer and pianist Jean-Michel Blais is sharing a dreamy piano-only version of the buoyant single, "ouessant" from his recent album aubades. Where the album was built around the concept of an "aubade," a song between lovers sung at dawn, “ouessant (piano)”, is a stripped-down and felted version of an already existing piece, like a soothing solitude after a celebration.

Blais says of the track, “‘ouessant (piano)’ in residence at the Eskal, Yann Tiersan pours me a pint. The immensity of the place reminds me of our Cape Breton. Implacable nature will always be so sublime. The Celtic airs remind me of the Andean ones, the saline one, the marine one. And it is after a hectic day that I rested on the island of Tiersen.”

Jean-Michael Blais will perform for the first time in Toronto since releasing aubades on January 20 at Koerner Hall for 21 C Music Festival. Blais will be joined by Nadia Monczak (violin), Lorraine Gauthier (cello) and Benjamin Deschamps (clarinet, bass clarinet, flute and soprano saxophone). Tickets can be found HERE. 

LISTEN / SHARE / BUY “OUESSANT (PIANO)” HERE

MORE ABOUT AUBADES
aubades marks the Montreal-born musician’s transition frosm pianist to composer, as he writes for an ensemble for the first time in his career. Written during the pandemic and following a breakup, Blais has used his distinctive musical voice to create a defiantly uplifting record with glistening instrumental textures and warm major tonalities. The album’s title refers to the “aubade”, a Middle Ages morning love song about lovers separating at daybreak, a dawn serenade. 

WATCH / SHARE “AMOUR” / “OUESSANT” HERE

Jean-Michel Blais has been a celebrated figure in the post-classical piano world since the release of his critically-acclaimed debut album II in 2016. He attended Quebec’s prestigious Trois-Rivières Music Conservatory but left after two years of study, exhausted by the restraints of the traditional music curriculum. Blais then travelled widely before retraining as a special education teacher. Whilst working as a teacher, he returned to music on his own terms, rediscovering his passion through improvising on the piano. These improvisations formed the basis of a recording career that has earned him two Polaris Music Prize nominations, a #1 on the Billboard Classical chart and a Time Magazine top ten album of the year. 

WATCH / SHARE “PASSEPIED” HERE

Despite the difficult global and personal backdrop, Blais described the time writing this album as a “fruitful moment of creativity for me. We started having hares in the park, beautiful butterflies flying everywhere. It was a time of lots of blossoming, and also a moment when I blossomed from being a pianist into a composer.” Musical ideas captured in over 500 recorded piano improvisations were transformed by Blais into 11 compositions performed by a 12-person ensemble. During the composition process, Blais collaborated with Alex Weston, former music assistant to Philip Glass. The musicians were recorded with close-up microphones, creating a richly intimate atmosphere that captures the human behind each instrument, from the mechanics of the woodwind keys to the snap of a double bass string. 

Blais also consciously found himself leaning towards major tonalities, which he believes are surprisingly rare in modern classical piano music. “With this album, I was definitely responding to certain trends,” Blais reckons. “For example, the fact that the solo piano tends to sound melancholic. That’s good, but I’ve done that already, I wanted to go beyond that.”

WATCH / SHARE ‘MAKING OF AUBADES’ DOCUMENTARY HERE

In aubades, every instrument is given moments of expression to an extent that took the players by surprise. Blais says, “there’s often been this dominant idea in classical music that one instrument is the chief, the king of all the instruments, and the others are in the background merely supporting.” He was inspired by more democratic musical textures from the Renaissance and Middle Ages, as well as the social democratic artistic ethos of the English 19th century poet, designer and activist William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. 

BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE

2023 PERFORMANCES
Jan 20 - Toronto, ON - Koerner Hall | 21 C Music Festival w/ 4 piece - TICKETS
Jan 29 - Quebec City, QC - Grand Théâtre Québec w/ 12 piece Ensemble - TICKETS

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