ROSE COUSINS SHARES ANOTHER NEW SINGLE, “BORROWED LIGHT”

ACCLAIMED SINGER/SONGWRITER ROSE COUSINS SIGNS TO NETTWERK, FOLLOWS UP FIRST SINGLE, “FORGET ME NOT”, WITH “BORROWED LIGHT”

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Recently, Nova Scotia’s Rose Cousins released her first single, “Forget Me Not”, on her new label home at Nettwerk. Today, she returns with another new single, “Borrowed Light”, which Cousins says is a “communion with the moon, a reflection on childhood wonder and the less blemished connection to one’s inner world. It’s a meditation on memory, time, acceptance and the mystery of it all, in the divine stillness of night.

“The hiding quality of night is my favourite, away from the bustling obligations of the day. I feel the calmest and dig the deepest at night. I bet I'm most myself. This song was written after a particular night walk and is certainly a culmination of much night walk thinking. ”

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Ever the emotional explorer, Rose Cousins’ songwriting plumbs the depths of the human condition. Her work has garnered her two JUNO Awards (2013’s We Have Made a Spark & 2021’s Bravado), two Canadian Folk Music Awards, eleven East Coast Music Awards and one Grammy Award nomination (2018’s Natural Conclusion), along with praise from the likes of the CBC, No Depression, LA Times, Associated Press, Billboard, Folk Alley, and NPR, who raved “Cousins’ disarmingly fluid vocal tone has the ability to convey the most internalized feelings without an ounce of fuss.” Over the years, she has shared stages with Patty Griffin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jann Arden, Kathleen Edwards, Joe Henry and Anais Mitchell, and her music has fittingly underscored scenes from notable TV shows including Grey’s Anatomy, Fire Country, Batwoman and Heartland. 

Stay tuned for more music and news from Rose Cousins. 

WATCH / SHARE “FORGET ME NOT” VISUALIZER HERE
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MADDIE JAY SHARES NEW SINGLE, “I’M THE LEADER”

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"The bubbling synth soundscape Jay creates becomes a place of solace, where she tries to shake off her concerns; thankfully she leaves plenty of space for others to not only relate, but to join in on the dance party. ...  a welcome return into the colourful mind of Jay."
CBC Music on "Eckhaus Latta"

“a woozy bedroom pop track that sets Jay's infinitely relatable lyrics to an infectious beat driven by arpeggiated synths” Exclaim! On “Excuses”

“a hooky slice of honest indie-pop.” The Line Of Best Fit on “Undertow”

“Elements of dream-pop collide masterfully with lo-fi hip hop, and 60's pop stylings unite with surf-rock tones to name but a few.” Earmilk on “Peanut Butter Song”

“Maddie Jay is an up-and-coming artist to get excited about.” FLOOD Magazine

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Last month, Maddie Jay was honored as Spotify x RADAR Canada’s flagship artist for July, supporting her new single “Name Your Price”. Today, she follows up with “I’m The Leader”, a song written when “I was trying to convince someone to be in love with me,” she says. “I was listening to a song by the artist Lewis Taylor where he described his love interest as ‘the leader of the band’ and I imagined myself as the woman in the song. A lot of the time the societal powers men have can leave me feeling really helpless, and one of the few times I can sense my leverage is when I know someone is attracted to me. 

“Sometimes it feels like I am trying to heal all of the pain men have caused me in my life by winning over one specific guy. I feel a similar sort of leverage when I am making my own music and have full creative control and those feelings are both really intoxicating. I produced the song to feel really gentle and seductive and warm but then once you are invested I threw in these really extreme moments of distortion and screaming to represent the extreme emotional fallout of these situations.”

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MORE ABOUT MADDIE JAY
Maddie Jay is a producer/artist and multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles, CA. Maddie has toured with Remi Wolf, Lorde and Summer Walker, and featured on Grammy Award winning artist RAC’s album Boy. She truly feels she is at her best when she is sitting in her bedroom studio surrounded by Casio synths, drum machines and guitars, twisting knobs and pouring her heart into her computer. 

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MEKO BRAIN (MIKE O’BRIEN) ANNOUNCES DEBUT SOLO LP, WONDERMENT

MEKO BRAIN, THE NEW SOLO PROJECT FROM MIKE O’BRIEN (ZEUS), ANNOUNCES DEBUT LP, WONDERMENT, OUT VIA VICTORY POOL OCTOBER 9, 2024

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PRE-SAVE WONDERMENT HERE

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Meko Brain is the fantastic new solo project from Mike O’Brien. Keen observers of Canadian indie music will know his work through an impressive list of projects, first and foremost his long-running pop outfit Zeus, which since 2009 has produced an encyclopedic style of pop/rock music, and they've amassed a pile of much-loved albums on the venerable Arts & Crafts label. And you’ve likely seen him as a sideman with other Canadian stalwarts such as Dan Mangan, Bahamas, and Jason Collett.

Today, he announces his debut LP, Wonderment, set for release via Victory Pool Records on October 9. Wonderment is a picture of economy: the words, arrangements, and instrumentation are all directly aimed at serving the song, whose inner core is formed by O'Brien's clean, mellow acoustic guitar alongside melodic, gently probing basslines (care of Zeus sideman and Yaehsun's Jason Haberman), and the wonderful Ringo-meets-Levon Helm drumming of the legendary Don Kerr (Ron Sexsmith, Rheostatics). This stage of the album was masterfully recorded by Gavin Gardiner (MOONRiivr, Wooden Sky) at his All Day Coconut Studios, home to many recent projects coming out of Toronto and beyond.

A product of the pandemic, Wonderment reflects O’Brien’s desire to focus on what’s most important in life. “Songwriting, in some ways, is like a check-in with yourself,” he says. “Are you doing your best? Are you showing up for those you love?” Even a cursory listen to these songs will attest to these themes; the album's warm sound is mirrored in its vast empathy, positivity, and self-awareness. Rendered in pleasingly sunny vintage leaning hues, masterfully dressed in muted electric guitars, glistening, lightly trippy keyboards, woodwinds, tight, subtle backing vocals, and mixed by Robbie Lackritz (Feist, The Weather Station), Wonderment is a veritable feast for the ears.

O’Brien also shares the second single off the album, “New Low”, of which he says, "many of my other songs have a more acoustic folk sound so I wanted to bridge the more acoustic, organic folky sounds with this slinky pop song. I love how it turned out. I ended up layering the vocal several times to get a wide yet intimate sound. It all culminates with a satisfying fuzzed-out guitar riff to bring it home! As for the lyrical idea, I started to form this idea of a guy who knows his partner is being unfaithful but doesn't want it rubbed in his face. If it's not stated out loud then he can continue to carry on the charade that he doesn't know what's going on. So in a sense, it became a dance song about self-pity. I wanted to make a video that matched this idea but in a not-too-literal way, so we enlisted Jack Harrison who created an amazingly simple yet effective video that matches the song's mood perfectly!"

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MORE ABOUT WONDERMENT
Album opener “Anyone Else's Eyes” features patiently unfurling nylon-string guitar chords and a hushed, earnest vocal espousing the merits of a multi-faceted worldview. A fitting introduction for an artist whose own multifacetedness, brings to mind both Canadian contemporaries such as Sandro Perri, Michael Feuerstack, and Peter Elkas, as well as history's true titans of song. 

Whiffs of The Beatles pop up in brief flashes, such as the Lennon-esque guitar leads in the bridge section of “Take Me As You Will”. The shuffling bounce heard in “You Still Belong” sounds like it could have had an assist from Tom Petty (and features some diverting guitar work from Sam Weber), as does “Brush It Off”, right up until the chorus, which displays a distinct early '80s skinny-tie pop flavor (think Squeeze or Joe Jackson). 

The production on “New Low” utilizes a distinctly upbeat approach, infusing the album's burnished sound with falsetto vocals and a dash of late 70s dance floor feel, almost like a super relaxed Chic, before spinning off into a thick, guitar harmony-laden middle eight. On “If It's Autumn”, O'Brien taps into a deep, timeless wellspring of songwriting, its shuffling, start-stop rhythm section underpinning an exercise in classic folk-pop songwriting, while “The Old Days” sounds like it could have been slipped onto a 4-track-era Elliott Smith album. 

WATCH / SHARE “ANYONE ELSE’S EYES” HERE
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Wonderment is an easy album to get lost in, and with its relatively breezy runtime, it's a listening experience that will no doubt have one reaching for the play button as soon as it's done. This is in no small part due to its remarkably streamlined and consistent sound, but also to O'Brien's increased focus on creating a cohesive, robust set of tunes, both musically and lyrically. “It was the first time that I really felt like I was consciously writing from my own experience in a truthful way,” he says, “and really talking about my lived experiences.” Of this new collection of songs, O'Brien says, “I hope it sounds like me. At this point in my musical life I'm not trying to emulate anything in terms of a sound or style, I'm just using my experiences to get as close to something authentic as possible.” 

PRE-SAVE WONDERMENT HERE

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WONDERMENT TRACKLIST
01 Anyone Else's Eyes
02 Say The Word
03 You Still Belong
04 Brush It Off
05 Come On Back
06 New Low
07 Take Me As You Will
08 Born Free
09 Warm Wind
10 The Old Days
11 If It's Autumn
12 Hallelujah Goodnight

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