WATCH / SHARE “MIDDLE NAME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “MIDDLE NAME” HERE
LIVING HOUR’S SOMEDAY IS TODAY, OUT SEPTEMBER 2, 2022 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES BEGIN SEPTEMBER 6
PRE-ORDER SOMEDAY IS TODAY HERE
“Some of the most heartsick synth-pop since Cocteau Twins. We're talking sweeping casios, massive hooks, and lovey-dovey feelings big enough to float on.” – VICE
“Hazy, widescreen pop with emotive smoky vocals” – Brooklyn Vegan
“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
The song slowly builds from there, as an ambient guitar and drums kick in while a hypnotic guitar jangles its way into the song. The second half gets even more into dreamy territory with intertwining guitar playing under a fantastic harmony where two voices slowly become one. It’s all truly sublime. - The Revue on “No Body”
Photo Credit : Adam Kelly // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
On Friday, Living Hour’s new album, Someday Is Today, will be available everywhere courtesy of Next Door Records. Today, the Winnipeg band is sharing one last peak at the album with the new video for album cut, “Middle Name”, a track about “getting stuck with yourself, forever, like an assigned middle name, or DNA,” says singer Sam Sarty. “Some of it’s already built in, but mostly you’ll be walking around as you, doing dishes, meeting people, untangling what it means, being busy being busy.”
Originally a voice memo called “Janes’ Chicken Nuggets” with three fast kitchen chords and a big stream of consciousness read out loud, “Middle Name” reshaped into a song that added parts about leaving a hated birthday party, walking home and the feeling of pretzeling yourself small, creating a diet version of yourself to fit into someone else’s life, house and situation.
“It’s about the false idea that you find clarity about yourself through making someone else happier – but truth is not there and the feeling is sharp and feels good deep down, because it’s growing pain! It’s learning!” continues Sarty. “And the connection to self only gets Bigger, Stronger, Smiling. That pesky middle name, that pesky always-togetherness with You, something to laugh about, something to rest in, something to remember and move around in like a sweater. You, always it’s you!”
“Middle Name” arrives today with a video from Director Eric Peterson and DOP Jesse de Rocquigny of Dog Days Film Co., filmed over two days around frequented and familiar spaces in Winnipeg. “I get to go for a walk, then a snack, then a sing. The song is about how one person holds an entire planet, world, ecosystem in themselves - I am everywhere I go. The busy brain and middle name follow me everywhere too. It's all a curse and a comfort!” says Sarty.
WATCH / SHARE “MIDDLE NAME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “MIDDLE NAME” 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
BUY / STREAM “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
BUY / STREAM “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.
PRE-ORDER SOMEDAY IS TODAY HERE
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.
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
BUY / STREAM “MISS MISS MISS” HERE
TOUR DATES
Tue, Sep 6 - Minneapolis @ Icehouse
Thu, Sep 8 - Toronto @ Baby G
Fri, Sep 9 - Ottawa @ Club Saw
Sat, Sep 10 - Elizabethtown @ Otis Mountain Get Down
Sun, Sep 11 - Montreal @ Casa Del Popolo
Tue, Sep 13 - Boston @ O'Briens *
Wed, Sep 14 - New York @ Trans Pecos *
Thu, Sep 15 - Philadelphia @ Ukie Club *
Fri, Sep 16 - Washington DC @ Songbyrd *
Sat, Sep 17 - Richmond @ Gallery5 *
Sun, Sep 18 - Baltimore @ Joe Squared *
Mon, Sep 19 - Cleveland @ Mahalls ^
Tue, Sep 20 - Grand Rapids @ Pyramid Scheme ^
Wed, Sep 21 - Chicago @ Sleeping Village
Thu, Sep 22 - Champaign, IL @ Pygmailion Festival
Sat, Sep 24 - Fargo @ The Aquarium
Thu, Nov 24 - Winnipeg @ West End Cultural Centre
Tue, Nov 29 - San Diego @ Public Square
Wed, Nov 30 - Long Beach @ Alex's Bar
Thu, Dec 1 - Los Angeles @ Resident
Sat, Dec 3 - San Francisco @ Bottom Of The Hill
Sun, Dec 4 - Sacramento @ Harlow's
Mon, Dec 5 - Reno @ Holland Project
Wed, Dec 7 - Portland @ Doug Fir Lounge %
Thu, Dec 8 - Victoria @ Lucky Bar
Fri, Dec 9 - Vancouver @ Red Gate %
Sat, Dec 10 - Seattle @ Vera Project %
* with Sour Widows
^ with Chastity & Crywank
% with Dear Nora
SOMEDAY IS TODAY TRACKLIST
01 Hold Me In Your Mind
02 Lemons And Gin
03 Middle Name
04 Feelings Meeting
05 December Forever
06 Curve
07 Hump
08 Miss Miss Miss
09 Exploding Rain
10 No Body
11 Memory Express
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