If Chris Kirby can’t be on the road, you know damn well that he is going to sulk in his home studio at Funk Island Lab, crafting lyrics designed to help you share in the experience. His latest single, “Close to You Again” is a direct jab to feels, using the power of roots-pop to lament the loss of human connection; a song so forlorn that Kirby can’t even muster up his signature funky soul stylings.
Co-written by Kirby and his wife Victoria Howse, “Close to You Again” captures the mood of the Nova Scotian lockdown during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the sound of an artist watching their career shut down and their world crumble and shrink around them, but in a friendly, digestible, Hallmark-ready form.
It may not be the funk we are used to hearing from Kirby, but the song is touching, adorably full of yearning, with the urgency of situationally-forced nostalgia. And, there’s inevitably still been a touch of bop that’s worked its way into the bass end of the song.
“We wrote this song to help us cope with lockdown, in a way,” says Kirby. “Victoria and I are both from Newfoundland, and were becoming very homesick and frustrated that we couldn’t visit our families back home. We used that sentiment to write a song that could speak to any person who is missing somebody, for reasons out of their control.”
Fortunately, Kirby and Howse weren’t entirely alone in this endeavour. While Howse takes on the role of managing harmony vocalist for “Close to You Again”, Cape Breton’s Keith Mullins (Barn Bhreagh) handled percussion and while the strings section was performed by Kevin Fox. Kirby himself performed and recorded all other instruments at his home studio.
Kirby says that “Close to You Again” is the first of many new songs that he plans to release in 2021.