MOONRIIVR IS THE NEW PROJECT FROM GAVIN GARDINER (THE WOODEN SKY) AND CHAMPAGNE JAMES ROBERTSON (LINDI ORTEGA), FEATURING BEN WHITELY (THE WEATHER STATION), AND LYLE MOLZAN (KATHLEEN EDWARDS)
NEW LP, VOL. 1, DUE OUT NOVEMBER 8, 2023 VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “BACHELOR NATION” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BACHELOR NATION” HERE
PRE-ORDER VOL. 1 HERE
Photo Credit : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
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 Collette, 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.
Today, they’re sharing the album single, “Bachelor Nation”, a nod to the Bachelor TV series. “When the Bachelor series first entered my life I’ll admit that I was skeptical of a television world where true love could be found,” says Gardiner. “But the show, and its legion of followers known affectionately as the ‘Bachelor Nation’, would in time win me over. Each Monday when my partner would sit down to watch Matt James on his quest to find love I would find a reason to be in the living room. Before long we were discussing the episode's events over coffee and waiting impatiently for next week’s episode to see what the future would hold for the inhabitants of the Bachelor Nation.
“When it came time to write this song Matt had found and lost love, the Bachelor Nation shook but kept moving. I decided to focus on the absurdity of fairy tale love both in the Bachelor Nation and the greater world abroad. The truth is life and love will knock you down and you will have to get back up again and try to put the pieces back together as best you can.”
“I hear this song as the soundtrack to a honeymoon in a Vegas motel, with plastic wine glasses by the kidney shaped pool and the air conditioner leaking slowly onto the carpet. There is sadness on the fringes of that picture but there is also a hope and happiness that reminds me love comes in many forms, none of which are perfect or fairy tailed, not even in the Bachelor Nation.”
WATCH / SHARE “BACHELOR NATION” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BACHELOR NATION” HERE
MORE ABOUT MOONRIIVR VOL. 1
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.
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 Whitely (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 Whitely'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
BUY / STREAM “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.”
PRE-ORDER VOL. 1 HERE
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