"During the months of Quebec winter lockdown last year, when we were prohibited from gathering and had a curfew of 8pm, some dear friends started searching out wild hidden spots around our neighbourhood to build outdoor fires (also prohibited in our province). We had a group message thread calling for gatherings, and it was the only way most of us ever saw each other for many months. Those were some life-saving encounters; spending the early evening hours sitting in the snow by the train tracks, or behind shipping containers in a parking lot. We’d make individual couches out of the snow, dragging pallets from behind buildings to make these beautiful fires, just appreciating the nearness of friends during that darkest of seasons, in these darkest of times. It became a beloved habit, one which has continued into this next pandemic stage.
Our once-upon-a-time regular haunts and meeting places are slowly and shakily reopening, strict rules we’ve lived under for more than a year now slowly loosening, but many of us continue to gather outdoors, mostly preferring these hidden and free spots over trying to rejoin or rebuild much of the shape of the life we left behind.
This song took shape during those dark months. It's based around a sample I made a few years ago of my voice all fucked-with in ways I had never done before and could never repeat again; it’d been waiting for its moment on one of my loop pedals ever since. I rediscovered it one of those lonely jam space days, and found it to be exactly the sentiment to fit the words I had been singing to myself; plugged in my guitar and allowed myself to just belt it the fuck out. Recorded those unfettered experiments and used them as the bones, added violins and then a hundred hunched-over hours of careful worrying over until it was ready for Thierry Amar’s growling bass and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh's mixing genius."
–
Jessica Moss
