BeatRoute Magazine Alberta print e-edition - October 2016

BOREAL SONS
limitations set you free
The songs of Boreal Sons are a certain type of magic.
They are earthly but angelic, grounded but lofty,
and the trio is soaring to new heights with their upcoming
release, You and Everyone. The album is full to the
brim with vigor and vitality, and a natural evolution from
Threadbare their 2013 release. The songs are layered with
a large array of keys and synth, while their iconic melodies
float polyphonically overtop.
After their 2014 European tour as a four-piece, 2015
was spent soul searching and restructuring the band. Evan
Acheson (keyboards, synth, vocals), Reagan Cole McLean
(bass, vocals, synth), and Zach Schultz (drums, vocals) decided
to trust in their experience and vision, and try their hand as
a trio. Acheson explains, “This to us was a challenge we were
slightly tentative about but also trying to throw ourselves
into.” He continues, “In a way… limitations set you free. If
you’re working within certain requirements or boundaries,
you need to be more creative, need to be smarter in order to
create the same quality of an album.”
Boreal Sons are using this lineup change as an opportunity
to expand upon their potential, exploring what the absence
of guitar could mean musically. Acheson describes how this
has led to an evolution of their sound. “We tried to create
textures within the spaces that would have previously been
filled by a guitar, whether it’s more background ambiance or
leading melodic arrangements.” He elaborates, “In other cases
we’ve treated the space left behind by the absence of guitar
as another instrument, and we’ve tried to use that negative
space artistically,”
“What Becomes” opens the album by kicking the door
down. A burst of rippling, spacey synth leads into Acheson’s
honeyed vocals and heartfelt lyrics. The song evokes a feeling
of disarray, of grasping to understand what life is left after loss
burns through our foundation. The song smolders on, and the
vocal refrain keeps floating like ashes gently falling. “Where are
you? Where are you?”
“The song explores our inability to grasp that a loved one
is gone,” Acheson explains. “It explores how weird that something
as familiar as death can feel so shocking.”
“Strangers,” the third song on You and Everyone, is a
stripped-down song reminiscent of Boreal Sons’ classic
euphonious ballads. This song explores the album’s second
theme: love. Love and death are parallels, in the way that
they are both so universal yet so surprising. “Deep down, we
know our flaws and shortcomings so well, we’re pretty hard
on ourselves.” Acheson says. “And when we truly believe that
someone loves us in spite of those things, it’s liberating, it’s
completely shocking because it flies in the face of what you
think to be true about yourself.”
You and Everyone contains the essence of previous
Boreal Sons records, but emboldened through time and
experience. There is a bigger range of styles, from grandiose
and commanding art-rock to vulnerable introspections set
to soft piano. Acheson explores some fundamental truths
in life, powerful experiences that happen to all of us. The
universality of these experiences gave him the inspiration for
the title. “It’s sort of us participating in a shared experience,
of death and love.”
Boreal Sons are heading on a 14-date cross-country tour in October
to support the album. Catch Boreal Sons at the Gateway
in Calgary on October 22nd, or find a show in your city online.
Boreal Sons work on both musical and thematic elements of their sound.
by Andrea Hunter
photo: Rachel Pick
ROCKPILE
BEATROUTE • OCTOBER 2016 | 27