Williston Irvine sets out in earnest to capture his most directly personal work to date. The Halifax-based musician works through some seriously low-key Americana on his new self-titled full-length. By controlling every detail with self-production on this short and sweet release, the album is purely Irving, allowing him to emphasize poignancy, style, and story-telling as he opens up about this most recent chapter in his life.
There’s something exceedingly gentle about Williston Irvine’s new album. It’s as if the songs were too precious to see the light of day and so we’re given only a quick glimpse as he clutches them to his breast. The songs have the muddied warmth of a demo tape, delicately crafted for an intimate friend – which makes a lot of sense, given the context in which they were written.
“During the writing and recording process I got engaged, so naturally a lot of the songs were spun out of that period,” explains Irvine.
He points out songs like “Call My Name,” “Get Me Back To You,” “Mirror,” “All & Fully Now,” “Read My Mind” and “Make Some” as all being directly influenced by the wealth of emotions that came with that excitement. Given how that list includes six out of the album’s ten songs, we might consider that a major theme.
And given the personal nature of those songs, it seems fitting that Irvine would personalize the album further by recording, playing, and producing the album himself, from start to finish. It’s practically a love letter, interspersed with guitar solos and split into A/B sides. The latter half of the album takes a couple of subtle left turns, as it spices up the overall theme with a few injections of pop offerings and rambling folk songs that border on the allegorical.
“I became really fascinated with the idea of playing around with different sonic landscapes when making this record. I tried to keep the flow of the record natural within those differences which I think you can hear when listening from front to back.”
“I’m very proud of it,” says Irvine, though he notes that working alone had both its share of ups and downs. “It got to a point where I was making minute, inconsequential changes in the mix just to feel like I was doing something when I just had to stop and say to myself ‘this is as good as I am able to make it sound at this point,’ and to just call it done.”
In the end, it’s a heartfelt album that’s all the more touching in its rawness. Williston Irvine has poured himself into every aspect of this release, and asks us not to get bogged down in the details—they’re only there for added character anyway. Better just to sit with it and soak.