The Wooden Sky Release New Track "You're Not Alone"

Toronto alt-rock quartet The Wooden Sky have just released a beautiful ode to loneliness and community, aptly titled "You're Not Alone."

 

"You're Not Alone" serves as the second single from the band's forthcoming album Swimming in Strange Waters, which will be released on April 7th via Nevado Music. Drawing its title from a line in Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel, Dune - "Survival is the ability to swim in strange water" - The Wooden Sky's fifth full-length record finds frontman and multi-instrumentalist Gavin Gardiner matching personal trauma against the increasingly bleak political climate we find ourselves in.

 

"More now than ever, I feel the weight of responsibility to act and make things better for the people to come," says Gardiner. "Maybe that sounds cliche, but it feels very real now. As an artist, you have your voice, and not much else. So you gotta use it.

 

 

The album sees the band exploring unchartered waters, where textural psychedelia inspired by the Paisley Underground movement melds into quiet, acoustic cyclical guitar melodies, before once again transforming into a bombastic, Johnny Cash-esque rally against the XL Keystone pipeline in Canada.

 

While 2014's Let's Be Ready found The Wooden Sky writing a pure "rock and roll" album, Swimming in Strange Waters sees the band experimenting once again. "I feel like we're back on track," says Gardiner.

 

John Angello (known for his work with Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Phosphorescent and Kurt Vile) mixed the album at Water Music in New Jersey. Around 95 percent of it was recorded to an old tape machine at Gardiner's home studio, and the rest was done at Hotel2Tango in Montreal and at a Toronto church where multi-instrumentalist Walker's father is the Anglican minister.

 

On every album, The Wooden Sky's aim is to somehow capture the band's live performance, to compress that adrenalin and vigour into a collection of songs that'll inevitably be played through headphones and crappy computer speakers. It's a tall order, considering The Wooden Sky has become known for both high-energy, sold-out rock shows and their charming, unconventional pop-up gigs.

 

Swimming in Strange Waters marks the closest the band has ever got to this coveted goal. To achieve that energy, Gardiner had to let go of any insecurities and garner new confidence, part of which he found after speaking with an opera singer friend and working with legendary producer, Angello, and part of which came from encapsulating that energy himself.

 

 

What people are saying about The Wooden Sky:

 

"Superior alt-country from Canadian collective. The Wooden Sky mine a deep seam of US influences - from The Violent Femmes to The Replacements, while anyone who fell in love with Ryan Adams around the millennium will find much of the rest easy to love" - Uncut

 

"The first few chords have the effect of making our heart race ... Gardiner's voice is so emotional, one would think his throat itself is brokenhearted" - Interview Magazine