WATCH / SHARE “MIDNIGHT AT THE GARDEN HOTEL” (LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO) HERE
BUY / STREAM “MIDNIGHT AT THE GARDEN HOTEL” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “THE HYPNOTIST” (LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO) HERE
BUY / STREAM “THE HYPNOTIST” HERE
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)
NEW LP, VOL. 1, DUE OUT NOVEMBER 8, 2023 VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS
ALBUM RELEASE SHOW NOVEMBER 23 AT TORONTO’S OWL’S CLUB // TICKETS HERE
PRE-ORDER VOL. 1 HERE
Photo Credit : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, MOONRIIVR is sharing two more tracks from their upcoming debut album, Vol 1., set for release on November 8, 2023 via Victory Pool Records. The first track, “Midnight at the Garden Hotel” imagines the last hours on earth. Living through this era where the morning news, or even the colour of the sky, feels tinged with the whiff of apocalypse, Garden Hotel attempts to take a sober, but hopeful, look at our present state.
“The recording of this song was a very special experience,” says Gavin Gardiner. “Camped out at the Robertson family farm north of the city, we turned the three car garage into an ad hoc recording studio, going so far as to drag a fridge sized 24 Track MCI tape machine along with most of the gear from the All Day Coconut studio. With the cars backed up to the garage so we could use the back seats as ISO booths for the amps, we opened the windows to allow a little bleed back into the room mics, creating our own unique soundstage. It was a hot July night, the air was thick and the music was flowing. After only a few takes we had what would become the album version. I almost didn’t want to admit we had it because the rush was so strong I wanted to sing it all night.”
WATCH / SHARE “MIDNIGHT AT THE GARDEN HOTEL” (LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO) HERE
BUY / STREAM “MIDNIGHT AT THE GARDEN HOTEL” HERE
For the second track, “The Hypnotist”, Gardiner says “I planted myself firmly in the Lars Kepler universe, and their book of the same name. Here I imagined myself as the famed but damaged detective Joona Linna. I offer up organs and limbs as a token of a flawed love, my heart, my hands, my fingers too. Before long I stepped out of my own body and was looking down on the world, a daunting place to take stock of all the pain and joy your own small existence has cast upon the world.
“The arrangement and recording of this song was inspired by Les Paul and his use of Vari-Speed on recordings like Mary Ford’s ‘Sitting on Top of the World’. The effect is contradicting, almost sinister. The otherworldly sound of voices and instruments as they were never meant to be heard is used on ‘The Hypnotist’ to help create a fantastical world akin to some Lynchian dream sequence set between the borders of Stockholm and the moon.”
WATCH / SHARE “THE HYPNOTIST” HERE
BUY / STREAM “THE HYPNOTIST”(LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO) 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
BUY / STREAM “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.
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
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.”
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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