"I will love you 'till we disappear"
The Canadian, Tourist Company, the musical project of Vancouver-based duo Taylor Swindells and Brenon Parry have created such a dreamy spacey love song in the teary eyed Til We Disappear from their new concept album "St. Helens" that the pair says "explores our psychological, emotional and relational responses to bad news". I, actually, heard Til We Disappear before learning of the theme that runs through the 2020 album and, even still, the song had an almost otherwordly tone amid the organic acoustic and piano sounds. The vast art folk orchestration and even bigger vocal sound that Tourist Company crafts is on one hand an odd affectation for such a personal sounding sound and makes the poetry feel that much more askew. I mean, the loveliness of bathing in the glow of the love you have for partner would feel like the fodder for hush intimate sounds, not something this grand. But the boys, go for over reaching art here and it works maybe because it is so majestic, so dramatic. I though a wee bit of a more pristine version of early Flaming Lips in tone (not sound).
Front man Taylor Swindells shares the personal seeds here:
“My partner sat me down and told me that she was 8 weeks late and that the doctor’s pregnancy test had come back negative. This left two options that were both terrifying: Either she could never have kids, or she had uterine cancer and we had no way of knowing if or how much it had spread. I wrote this song pretty shortly after that conversation.”
“Two weeks later, after a new doctor’s test, we found out that she was actually pregnant. Which was a HUGE relief. We still don’t know what medically happened but we’re proud parents of an amazing 2-year old. In those two weeks when our world was turned upside down, I felt every stage of the album but all that mattered was the closing line, ‘I will love you Til We Disappear’.” - Taylor Swindells
"I'm half awake when you're not here"
(this line, in and of itself, grants Swindells hubby points for a lifetime)
The Official Video plays like an avant garde film, like a cross between delirium and broken memories as directed and produced by Sterling Larose.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
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In an industry as volatile as the music business, making a career as an indie band can seem daunting, if not downright impossible. For Tourist Company, the Vancouver-based musical duo of Taylor Swindells and Brenon Parry, they haven’t let the uneasiness of their life choice hinder them in any way. In fact, they seem to have taken the tension and used it as creative tinder.
The music Tourist Company created on their previous album, Apollo, was far-reaching, cinematic, and grandiose. This time around, they’re keeping both feet firmly planted on Earth, choosing instead to follow a more introspective route. Their new album is rooted in a creative experiment undertaken by Taylor.“I was thinking about the way we process life in the 21st century. How we interact with tragedy and bad news. Those moments carry a sense of urgency and I wanted that to invade this record” he said. We often hear artists talk about fanciful escapes - buying property in a remote part of their country, or a sojourn into the wilderness. Taylor’s escape was more restrained, yet the personal parameters that he set out for himself yielded the escape he needed. “We had access to a heritage house in a historic neighbourhood with high vaulted ceilings and a grand piano in the front room. I brought all my equipment and set up a creative space with guitars, amps, synths and recording gear, all orbiting the piano. I started working and stayed up for 72 hours straight, just writing”.
As Taylor began what ended up becoming a 2-year writing process, the outside world seemed to volley between chaos and calm. A rise in nationalism, protests, the increasing presence of artificial intelligence, a global pandemic, and natural disasters. “I had just planned a road trip down the West Coast of the United States and was reminiscing about my childhood fascination with volcanoes. They became an image of volatility and uncertainty and the songs took their form: an expression of what processing disaster feels like.”
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