At the moment, there’s an inherent problem with releasing an album with even the faintest whiff of emo lament to it: it will, inevitably, be seen and measured through the lens of our dystopian present. Every track will be shoehorned into the context of a world disaster and the whole thing cheapened for being so overly apropos.
Where Never Here For Long, the new album from June Body, may have been shaped by those events and the weight that comes with them, it stands as a testament to the band’s ability to persevere through those challenges and deserves to be remembered for that, rather than despite those reasons.
Never Here For Long falls subject to the many tropes of a whole genre; it is decidedly not a cheery album. Through the power of shared catharsis (or is it schadenfreude?), however, it remains a distinctly poignant—if not outright pleasurable—album. At times, the album gets particularly bleak: on “I Fall” lyricist/guitarist Connor James equates the value of social bankruptcy with being mortally challenged, while “Flickering” shares the experience of having lost a friend to the worst possible outcome of depression. Lyrically, Never Here For Long doesn’t pull any punches.
Musically, however, it leans in the direction of mid-2000s indie rock, from which it sources a bittersweet glimmer of hope; imagine if Brand New had been fronted by The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy. It’s reminiscent of so many split cassettes of that era. Never Here For Long is all fire and fury but with the raw edge of self-immolation. Right from the opening titular track, the openly resigned “Never Here For Long,” June Body make it abundantly clear that this album is a Trojan horse of emotions.
The ability to turn on a dime is most apparent in the groove-heavy second track, “Ember,” containing within that dance party’s first line: “I have the skills to lie to my therapist.” Within that single line is a sense of hubris, resilience, and the dark sense of humour that comes with a certain level of self-awareness. Of course, we’re all invited to that party with one of the most infectious choruses on the whole album.
With closing tracks like the more somber “Why You Chose to Leave” pivoting into single-worthy “Ashes.” a lament for the happier occasions that only make you feel less deserving. Never Here For Long gives the impression that the album was specifically designed to turn the knife. From start to finish it’s an exercise in finding the cloud to go with their silver lining, but this is the madness June Body have subscribed to with sufficient vigor to sign the rest of us up.
And given the subject matter and the larger context in which the album has been released—much of it was actually written prior to these circumstances—it drives home a message that for June Body this is an act of defiance. Rather than diminishing their efforts, their DIY approach turned into an opportunity to revisit their sound and seems to have brought them all that much closer together.
“It’s a bit of a trip because this album already carries some nostalgia with it for me—maybe in part because we’ve been working on it for so long, but I think mainly because the approach to recording it was so similar to how we recorded our first album, Star for You,” explains Connor James.
“The DIY process snapped me back to those early days when I first met Alex—rehearsing songs on acoustic guitars on the couch, recording everything in a cramped bedroom, and then being so stoked that we were able to capture a sound that was so uniquely us. I’d encourage anyone who wants to start a band to embrace a DIY approach to making music. It’s way more fun, and the results are often much more original and definitive of who you are as an artist.”
Working from home in a world that has suddenly lost all sense of time also proved to be something of a luxury as well. It allowed the band to appropriately spend as much time focusing on getting things right on their own terms instead of cranking it out in a pressure cooker.
“I think overall the process allows for more creative freedom in a few ways: you don’t have to worry about time constraints in the studio, it can be surprisingly affordable even if you’re renting gear, re-recording or doing additional sessions isn’t a huge hassle, and the band has more say in how the final product turns out,” adds bassist Alex Callaghan.
“If we had to have gone with the first session’s takes of everything we did, we wouldn’t have been nearly as happy with the end result. There’s a lot of pressure in a studio environment to get it done and get it right, quickly, and that can make you less likely to have fun and come up with interesting ideas along the way. Our approach is a more stress-free, laid-back one that inevitably has injected so much more personality in the record than we might have been able to achieve had we gone with a more traditional method.”
Nobody got a better sense of that development than the team at Springtide Productions who were there every step of the way to document the process. Where most of us devolved into some sort of pre-societal cave dwellers, content to survive on sourdough and finding ourselves in a semi-abusive relationship with a green parrot, June Body had formed a little commune. As can be seen in the documentary series accompanying the release, it seems that June Body coped better than most.
“I think the coolest thing for me to see about the recording process was just how deep the collaboration went,” says Alex Boyd, who has acted as June Body’s documentarian for years, but has more recently formalized with Springtide Productions. “Throughout the tracking process, each member was constantly checking in with the other two for a sort of sanity check, and to make sure that everything fit. I witnessed changes being made to these songs constantly and it made for a better record. I can listen to this project far in the future and distinctly hear each member’s influence.”
Jordan Haines, also of Springtide Productions Team, adds, “It was really impressive to see first-hand just how approachable the band made the DIY method seem. I’m super proud of the documentary series for showing that (because that was the focus), but also having a really REALLY good record come out of it as a tangible result of the process is amazing.”
Never Here For Long, with all of its emotional rollercoasters, is still, at its heart, about the journey. It’s one thing to get a little cathartic—and who doesn’t enjoy wallowing in that process occasionally—but to know you’re going through it together is almost worth the experience. At least when it’s this catchy.