WATCH / SHARE “FLOWERS ON THE FIRE ESCAPE” HERE
DEBUT LP, VOL. 1, OUT TODAY VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS
MOONRIIVR IS THE NEW PROJECT FROM GAVIN GARDINER (THE WOODEN SKY) AND CHAMPAGNE JAMES ROBERTSON (LINDI ORTEGA), FEATURING BEN WHITELEY (THE WEATHER STATION), AND LYLE MOLZAN (KATHLEEN EDWARDS)
TOUR DATES BEGIN NOVEMBER 17 // TICKETS HERE
“Sounds as if Buddy Holly and Chris Isaak made a record with Damien Jurado. The slowmotion-surf on “10,000 suns” as well as the Folk-Blues “Run” with it’s sizzling analogue amps are outstanding.” - Rolling Stone (Germany)
Photo Credit : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, MOONRIIVR’s debut LP, Vol. 1, is available everywhere courtesy of Victory Pool Records. The band is also sharing the new video for album track “Flowers On The Fire Escape”, a song that “came at a time in my life when, whether I knew it or not, change was around the corner,” says songwriter Gavin Gardiner. “I felt that I was writing a clever song about climate change and social justice, but now I hear in it my longing for connection. The pain and struggle in the world at the time, as well as in my personal life. There were friendships lost, mistakes made, and the feeling of bracing myself for a new beginning. It’s a lot to pack into a four minute song built around an upright bass and the bongo’s but it’s all in there and it’s one of my favorites on the album.”
WATCH / SHARE “FLOWERS ON THE FIRE ESCAPE” HERE
MORE ABOUT MOONRIIVR
The story of MOONRIIVR’s incarnation began in the spring of 2020, early days of the pandemic. Gavin Gardiner – best known as the front person for JUNO Award-nominated indie-folk mainstays The Wooden Sky, and as a producer and engineer at All Day Coconut studios for artists such as Fiver, Jason Collett, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – visited his friend “Champagne” James Robertson at the Robertson family farm north of Toronto. After years touring as lead guitar with acts like Lindi Ortega and Dwayne Gretzky, Robertson was similarly adrift during those strange early pandemic days. The two had been circling around each other in the Toronto music scene when the chance to collaborate landed in front of them. Armed with a vintage Tascam 388 tape recorder, mellotron and a nylon string guitar the two got stuck in and quickly realized they had stumbled onto something special.
The songs on MOONRIIVR’s aptly titled debut, Vol. 1, came together on an old analogue tape machine, laced with sweetly reverberating slide guitars, wonky string synths, and nimble percussive environments. MOONRIIVR's knack for creating sonic worlds that are at once lightly trippy and wholly inviting means that, as much as Vol. 1 draws on inspirations from decades past, it maintains a pleasing, distinctly out-of-time feel. The band half-jokingly likened the album to ‘Buddy Holly meets Krautrock’, and strange as it sounds it's not far off the mark.
WATCH / SHARE “BACHELOR NATION” HERE
Thematically, the songs are wide ranging, providing a winning contrast to the laser focus of MOONRIIVR's sonic architecture. Running the gamut from personal reflections on finding pleasure in the minutiae of everyday life on “Blonde Hair Now” to meditations on some of the more disturbing and inescapable developments in world politics over the last few years (“Midnight at the Garden Hotel”, “Flowers on the Fire Escape”), Gardiner deftly addresses these seemingly disparate thought-poles with a balance of opacity and directness. While not beating the listener over the head, Gardiner doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics, be it climate change or navigating friendship schisms that developed around divergent pandemic politics. It's the kind of record that can thrum warmly in the background but also pays dividends for those listeners willing to dig a little deeper.
WATCH / SHARE “MIDNIGHT AT THE GARDEN HOTEL” (LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO)
WATCH / SHARE “THE HYPNOTIST” (LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO)
After this initial round of writing and recording sessions at the farm, the two decamped back to Toronto where they roped in first-call bassist Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station, Basia Bulat, Julia Jacklin) and percussionist extraordinaire Lyle Molzan (Kathleen Edwards, Corb Lund), and continued tweaking and refining their sound during weekly sessions at All Day Coconut. The two added a new layer of depth to the proceedings, with Whiteley's tasteful, earthy bass playing providing a warm anchor to the music, and Molzan largely eschewing a standard drumkit in favour of triangles, congas, and other sundry percussive items.
WATCH / SHARE “BLONDE HAIR NOW” HERE
Finally, MOONRIIVR returned to the farm to pull the whole thing together. They set up shop in the garage, placing guitar amplifiers in cars and opening and closing the car doors to adjust sound leakage during recording. The 30 degree July heat made it necessary to keep the garage doors open, letting the natural ambient sounds of their rural environs seep into the background of the songs. Gardiner in particular delighted in this refreshing change from the status quo, re-setting himself with this open-ended, at times magical creative process, which he says “really opened up a whole new musical world to me that I had heard in the music I loved.”
BUY / STREAM VOL. 1 HERE
TOUR DATES:
Nov 17, 2023- Ottawa, ON, Canada - Dominion Tavern *
Nov 18, 2023- Kingston, ON, Canada - The Grad Club *
Nov 23, 2023- Toronto, ON, Canada - Owl's Club
Jan 25, 2024 - Red Deer, AB, Canada - Bo's Bar and Grill *
Jan 26, 2024 - Edmonton, AB, Canada - Winterruption Festival *
*with Peter Dreams (July Talk) - Tickets
VOL. 1 TRACKLIST
01 Blonde Hair Now
02 Midnight At The Garden Hotel
03 Flowers On The Fire Escape
04 No Turning Back
05 The Hypnotist
06 Let The World Turn
07 Mother To Me
08 Bachelor Nation
09 10,000 Suns
10 Run
11 Let’s Tell Everyone We Know
12 Only The Lonely Know How