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Today, Clothesline From Hell, the Toronto based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam LaFramboise, releases his new EP, Soon We’ll All Be Smoking. Fusing songs written and performed on acoustic guitar with programmed drums and samples, the result is imaginative, energetic and full of color.
On the EP, LaFramboise says, “I’d like to say the title is a reference to a Delillo novel or something cool, but I actually stole it from season 2 of The Bear. I only saw the scene once but if I remember correctly, the staff is getting overwhelmed by a dinner rush or whatever and someone shouts something to the effect of ‘don’t worry, soon we’ll all be smoking’. It struck me immediately and I started thinking about the trickiness of living oriented toward rewards. It’s always like ‘once I do this, then I’ll have this’ and a lot of the time, the reward is the least interesting part. Something as banal as a cigarette; something as toxic as a cigarette. I feel like not getting caught in this loop is the whole battle of living. But, I’d be lying if I acknowledge that I probably named this EP after that line as a way of promising myself and others that if we get this done, rock stardom awaits us. I’m still daydreaming about that sort of thing and smoking even though I know it’s really bad for me.”
Today, Clothesline From Hell is sharing one last track from the EP, “The Way It Goes”, of which LaFramboise says he “wanted to make a quiet song about the paradoxes of living in the city as a student. It’s like smoking cigarettes outside the bar talking about Byung Chul Han, noticing someone nodding out or sleeping on the street next to you, and feeling incredibly stupid for dedicating your energy to pure intellectualization. It’s mostly a condemnation of myself, as I don’t want to tell anyone else that their endeavours are pointless, but I do think that there is a healthy amount of guilt to be felt about this sort of thing. I could reference virtue signalling or namecheck Instagram stories, but that does not seem like the root of the problem to me; it’s simply tragic to witness the disparity of wealth and opportunity, while feeling incapable of saying anything worthy of the pain. We threw drums on it and these looming electric guitars that sort of degrade as they ring out, and now all I see when listening to it is people marching and things burning. But, I also hope that it goes down easy for others and is read as a pop song, as the conclusion is positive. It’s just a process of assessing the world, losing the will to live and then finding that will again and loving the people you do. Though, I say it better in the song.”
