Music tends to take an important role in our lives, whether it helps you through difficult times or is there during the joyful times. This brings us to Fredericton-based twins Rebecca and Samantha Tinsley aka Atlas who have been using music as a constant in their lives. Having moved around multiple times growing up within a military family, working on the release of their upcoming album, Treason, marks a very important milestone for them.
“The entire album deals with many different aspects of mental health,” explains Rebecca Tinsley. “Specifically, knowing that you shouldn’t do something, or that something’s bad for you and doing it anyway. Whether that be in relationships, pretending you’re someone you’re not, or comparing yourself to other people.
“We all do it on some level and sometimes it feels as if you’re committing ‘Treason’ against yourself by doing things you know you shouldn’t. Though the song title applies best to the song itself, it was definitely a running theme throughout the whole album.”
With the mysterious tinkle of a music box opening up “Secrets,” followed by the light strum of guitar strings, the sisters tell a story about hiding some of your qualities just to fit in.
“’Secrets’ was the first of thirteen songs that will be released in the upcoming months.” says Tinsley, “Secrets is the black sheep in the album, leaning towards the more ‘rock’ focused genre. It is about pretending to be something you’re not. It’s about the feeling of being too much to handle and feeling like you need to hide things about yourself to keep the people around you happy. ‘Secrets’ was originally written for a more theatrical concept album that we were working on, but we ended up liking it so much that it made its way onto the album.”
Working long hours on the album with the help of drummer Mathieu Benoit, bassist Jonathan Goud, guitarist Aaron Currie (Nashville), and Craig Lang (Cayman Islands) the arranger and keys player, Treason took form. The songs will be released as one song per month until all thirteen are available. All tracks were mixed and mastered by producer Andrew MacRae and Outreach Productions.
“We have thirteen tracks in total and will be releasing one a month until we run out, at which point we will release the album in its entirety.” explains Tinsley, “Being new artists, we felt it best to release the tracks as singles over time to try to stay relevant while working on additional content, and to gain traction in the industry.
“The album is a bit of a mixed bag as a genre and style, we have some songs that lean towards synth-pop, some that are blues and jazz, and others that are indie R&B. We felt to release this as one album would have felt strange one song to the next. By releasing one song a month we not only get to showcase each song but also are provided with the opportunity to explore our own interest in many different genres.
“Even though we spent long days in the studio working on the album we couldn’t be more thankful for the great team of people we had working on it with us.”