If it’s the duty of any good folk artist to tell a story with a song then Jason Anderson is a living breathing Gordian Knot. Despite its relatively compact five tracks, Canyonlands, the latest EP from the Fredericton-based singer-songwriter, is the equivalent of a novel. It is deliciously dense and layered with thoughtful and gently evocative lyrics that call to be puzzled out—but in their own time.
Anderson, it seems, has had a full year. Canyonlands is his second solo release of 2021. With the equally transcendental We Walked home in Silence being released in February, Anderson clearly had something to get off his chest and plenty of time to work it out.
“The songs of Canyonlands are songs for letting go, songs for moving forward, songs written and recorded throughout a year where we couldn’t do much or go anywhere, really,” explains Anderson. “Making music became a lifeline, a tremendous source of purpose – putting together this EP was cathartic and healing.”
The pictures that Anderson paints on Canyonlands are broad; he lays his own particular view of the world at our feet and then hones in on an unexpected perspective presented in endearing detail. And that seems to reflect the almost universal experience of the last couple of years and the inherently personal nature each of us has come to cope with it. As Anderson explains, these are songs for “moving forward written at a standstill,” because, inevitably, not every aspect of life slows are quite the same rate.
“This was a difficult year of endings – we lost my grandmother who was an incredible person, the matriarch of our family, the first to sit me down at the piano and teach me music – but also a year of beginnings, as my sister gave birth to a beautiful son,” explains Anderson. “These interwoven events got me thinking about the in-betweens and my place on that spectrum, and so much of that is in these songs.”
The resulting album sounds, at times, like a more organic version of Bon Iver or if Bruce Springsteen had been produced by Aaron Dressner. While much of the album is grounded in Anderson’s guitar—though Matt Knelman does an exceptional job filling that role on the ebullient “Pockets Full”—Jeff LaRochelle and his saxophone have a tendency to steal the show.
That Bon Iver comparison is never more obvious than the album’s single, “Telluride.” It might be right at home on 22, A Million with enough vocoder (though that could probably be said of anything). That balance between the minutia of storytelling, pedal steel, and saxophone stands perfectly at the crossroads of modern folk and further stands out as a real highlight on the already stellar EP.
While “Telluride” literally contains lyrics about a lack of footnotes and explains that it “doesn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation,” this straightforward song about a long-lasting friendship is rife with a shorthand about the same. It represents the endurance of shared experience that inevitably forms a language all of its own, making this song both clever and touching in its call to rekindle a connection: “Oh my friend, I will follow you, through the darkness and the light, I will be there, I will be there in the end.”
The EP’s closing track, “Thinkin About,” is the most obvious nod to the events Anderson experienced in the last year. Between the loss of his grandmother and the birth of his nephew, we hear the gentle shuffling of a mild existential crisis spilling over. This, at least for the duration of Canyonlands, is Anderson at his most philosophical, with that ponderance taking a front seat over the ebb and flow of the song. “Maybe there is or isn’t a point to wondering why,” sings Anderson, turning the ultimate question back in on itself and giving cogito ergo sum a good flanking in the process.
Canyonlands is, ultimately, a comfortable album. Much of the EP captures a sense of Anderson musing over the experience of his experiences with the value of hindsight and, finding himself contented with the outcome, seems to find the journey beyond his concern. It is beautifully unhurried and, with the confidence of a fait accompli, is liberated from any sense of boisterousness to focus on the art of the matter.
“I am so proud of the results and the work behind them and feel that we have created a little sonic world of catharsis – a place to feel and think and maybe even let go a bit,” says Anderson. “I have a full-length coming later this fall that builds on these themes, and this EP feels like a magical and timely first step.”