Looking out over the banks of the Saint John/Wolastoq River it’s easy to see where Keeper E. is coming from on her latest single, “Telling the Truth.” It’s early spring and the river has swollen its banks, leaving the usual flotsam and jetsam of litter along the shores. The perennial question is tossed around as casually as someone might consider a rain cloud: “will it flood this year?”
Eyeing the banks judiciously, we collectively agree this might not be the year for it. We nod to each other with a growing, but uncertain, confidence that is further tarnished by the knowledge that we’ve only been spared by a warmer than average winter.
New Brunswick’s increasingly regular and disastrous flood season is the direct inspiration for “Telling The Truth,” and a sentiment that lurks in the hearts of many New Brunswickers. It is an existential despair brought about by climate change and the recognition that our way of life must change drastically to divert the worst of it.
For Keeper E. it means a metaphorical and literal sense of watching the world sink, but it might be easier if everyone were being a little more honest about the state of things.
“I walked around town for hours as I wrote this song, thinking about how easily all my favourite places could be destroyed by a flood or a hurricane. Thinking about how if we were honest and thinking clearly, taking care of the earth would be a priority,” says Keeper E..
“It also forced me to think about the things in my own life that were slowly getting more and more pressing the longer I did nothing about them. At the forefront of my mind was the extreme feeling of wanting to tell someone I loved them, but not having the courage. And like most things, the longer I left it the more it felt like I was sinking underwater.”
“Telling the Truth” is set to appear on Keeper E.’s upcoming and much-anticipated album, The Sparrows All Find Food, which is due out on Friday, April 23 via LHM Records.