North Atlantic Explorers’ Glenn D’Cruze sits in an old rowboat off the shores of Burrard Inlet. “Could you try looking more seamanlike?” jokes the photographer. The reserved musician unships the oars. “Is that better?”

In terms of both inspiration and musicianship, NAE’s two-album project My Father Was a Sailor and All the Ships at Sea is, above all else, authentic. To get a feel for the seafaring past of his late father, D’Cruze wrangled passage aboard an Icelandic cargo ship during storm season. To authentically render the timelessness and vastness of the Atlantic, he enlisted the help of a choir to fill out the vocal section. And because the modern music fan expects more than just an album, D’Cruze reluctantly finds himself playing sailor on a cold fall morning.

“Music once spoke more for itself,” D’Cruze says. “You wrote about what you knew, loved, or were interested in, and then worked hard to convey it to your audience.” Simplicity and sincerity have been NAE hallmarks from the start. “I was playing around with some songs and ideas when it occurred to me that my dad had lived quite a romantic and adventurous life before settling down. I knew very little about it, when suddenly he died.”

The ensuing voyage of discovery felt natural for D’Cruze, whose interests include cartography and who has always been drawn to the sea. “I pored over my dad’s old photographs and merchant-marine documents, and a nautically themed project soon congealed.”

On the first album, My Father Was a Sailor, earthly and transcendent elements push up against each other like current and wind. A young and confident William D’Cruze, dressed in a uniform adorned with gold braid, holds a pipe and smiles from the album cover.

Delivered in the younger D’Cruze’s customary understated vocals accompanied by piano, the opening track, “The Sailor and the Stenographer”, portrays a man very much alive, one “industrious and brave”. Motifs of youth and adventure continue throughout the first half of the album, which includes a dynamic cover of Pipa’s cryptic “South”. A transition occurs midway, however, beginning with the track “Lost at Sea”.

“Death comes to the sailor unexpectedly,” D’Cruze explains, as was the case with his father. The musician grapples with the invisible force that carries the sailor onward—thus the steady, fluid drive of “Into the Blue Sea”. Light and music welcome the castaway on the other side.

Further along, “No More Stormy Seas” culminates in a Dante-esque crescendo of horns. D’Cruze’s vocals are now paired with Brenda Wind’s as D’Cruze senior narrates, appealing to his son’s musical sensibilities: “Son, you should hear these angels’ trumpets play.”

The recently released companion album, All the Ships at Sea, is an instrumental sea voyage of sorts. Each track is named after a ship that the elder D’Cruze once manned regularly from Scotland to Iceland and back. “Cape Nelson”, “Saint Aidan”, “Agate”, and “Sapphire” conjure things distant, ethereal, and beautiful. Thirteen songs transport the listener over smooth, polished, and glimmering surfaces.

“I was aiming for a cinematic effect,” D’Cruze says, “something haunting and atmospheric.” Throughout, the multi-instrumentalist draws on his talents, not only on drums and piano, but also on oddities such as the harmonium, as on “Saint Aidan”. When underscored by electronic drum loops on D’Cruze’s rendition of “Sailing By”, the music plunges deep, settles, and there remains.

“I’m used to working alone, but this project was a collaboration with many others. Working with the choir of mostly strangers was the best part. Everything was done on the spot and with minimal rehearsal. And their voices covered up some of the more obvious flaws of my own voice.”

Vancouver’s JP Carter (Destroyer, Dan Mangan) provides the horn section, and Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch bookends My Father Was a Sailor with mariner weather forecasts read in a manner befitting the vintage texture of the project.

True to D’Cruze’s cinematic vision are the miles of sea, the seaside towns, the high-reaching spires, and the low-flying birds captured by Greg Gillespie, the filmmaker who accompanied D’Cruze on his voyage from Scotland to Iceland.

“Greg nearly paid for that footage with his life,” D’Cruze says. “He was so intent on catching the waves breaking over the bow that he almost fell in.” This spectacular footage features in the series of videos that accompanies the project.

Crossing these stormy expanses of the Atlantic on a cargo ship gave D’Cruze greater insight into his father, and into the life he led.

“It’s no wonder Dad was such a remarkable guy. Sailors face an intense existence out there, with death ever near.” A far cry from drifting on placid waters in Burrard Inlet. Perhaps this is why the photo shoot wraps early, yielding just enough promo material to keep pace with the times.