This time it’s personal for Twin River

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      Imagine balancing academic life in one city, a band in another, and the sting of ending a serious relationship.

      One might assume that writing and recording a full-length album in the midst of such inner conflict would be a terrible idea, but for Twin River’s Courtney Ewan, it was the perfect storm.

      Together, Ewan and Andy Bishop are the minds behind Twin River’s eclectic, dreamy garage pop. When the two decided it was time to work on the follow-up to their debut, Should the Light Go Out, Ewan was completing a master’s degree in classical literature at McGill University, while Bishop lived in Vancouver.

      She says their sophomore record, Passing Shade, came together under rather unconventional circumstances.

      “With me living in Montreal, it was hugely different for our band,” Ewan explains over a pint of lager at the Lido. When she wasn’t able to make weekend trips back to Vancouver, she wrote alone, sending demos and voice memos to Bishop for feedback.

      Like most creative minds, Ewan says her ability to put pen to paper often ebbs and flows—sometimes ebbing for months at a time.

      “The more time I spend as a musician, the more I’ve realized that I can’t push it—if it’s not coming, it’s not coming,” she says of the process. “Fortunately, the flows have coincided with writing for records and recording, but it definitely needs to be a natural progression.”

      Working solo in Montreal wasn’t the only new challenge that Ewan faced while writing Passing Shade. In the past, she’s tried to keep her songs devoid of autobiographical references, “skirting around” her personal feelings. After calling it quits with a long-term boyfriend, though, she says that it was hard to ignore the way that experience affected her creative output.

      “I was like, ‘Why am I working against something that feels natural?’ ” she says. “I tend to be like a bull in a china shop, just powering through things, and this was the first time in my life where I had to stop and let myself experience it. I think it made writing it, not more challenging, but maybe more painful than I’m used to.”

      Thankfully, Ewan’s obsession with Greek tragedies has helped her learn to “believe in the value of that catharsis”. Ewan deliberately veiled the dark, breakup-inspired lyrics on the record in a sparkling, surf-inspired sound, brought on by influences like Angel Olsen and Kevin Morby.

      “It’s funny to me because the happier-sounding songs are actually the sadder ones on the record, which I kind of like—it’s my weakness with pop music,” she says. “If people are paying attention, there’s more meaning to the songs that might just sound like road-trip anthems or a summery day at the beach.”

      The record’s first single, “Antony”, is a perfect example of this dichotomy. Ewan’s melancholic vocals are buoyed by Bishop’s reverb-soaked guitar melodies, a simple but effective drumbeat, and a synth breakdown that flawlessly marries ’80s new wave and modern indie pop.

      Like the distance that separated Ewan and Bishop while the album was being written, a chunk of time in between the two sessions it took to record the album made for an energy unique to Passing Shade.

      Recording with producer and sound engineer Colin Stewart (Ladyhawk, Dan Mangan, Hot Hot Heat), Ewan, Bishop, and a rotating lineup of 10 additional players spent 10-day stretches—first in the summer and then the following winter—living at the secluded Vancouver Island studio the Hive. Describing it as a “paradise”, Ewan says that being so far removed from the day-to-day grind made it easier to focus on the task at hand.

      “I don’t think that I would really want to record differently… I like living in that bubble, and I think for me, creatively, I’m better that way, with blinders on,” she says.

      As Ewan prepares to head back to school in the fall—this time to New York University for a PhD—she finds her worlds as an academic and a garage-pop frontwoman colliding. Seeping into her writing, the motifs from the classic texts she reads and translates have at times helped her make sense of life’s trials.

      “The thing I like about classics, and about literature as a whole, is that we’re not talking about anything different at all,” she says. “Sure, the people and places and things might be updated, but the emotional things that we deal with, the human condition, hasn’t changed.

      “To be human means to struggle with what it means to be human—forever—and that’s always what it’s going to mean.”

      If Ewan’s ability to write in the midst of a flood of struggles is indicative of anything, it’s that those circumstances, however challenging or impossible, only added an enthralling new chapter to the story of Twin River.

      Twin River's single, "Antony", off their latest record, Passing Shade. 

      Twin River plays a Passing Shade release party at the Cobalt on Thursday (June 30).

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