Bleep

Six years after their last studio album, Taylor Kirk’s Canadian band Timber Timbre has finally announced a new record Lovage - their most accomplished and engrossing album to date, set for release October 6th via [Integral]. The lead single, Ask The Community”, is out today alongside a music video. Since releasing and extensively touring “Sincerely, Future Pollution” (2017), Taylor Kirk has been busy working as a producer on several full-length LP’s, including Joseph Martone’s “Honeybirds” and the sophomore recording “Nightshades” by This Lonesome Paradise. Timber Timbre have quietly released two cassette-only EP’s, “I Am Coming To Paris” and “The Dissociation Tapes Volume 1”. Finally returning with a new full-length entitled “Lovage,” the most accomplished and engrossing Timber Timbre album to date. Which isnt to say that Taylor Kirk has merely refined his working methods. In fact, “Lovage” is a bona fide masterpiece, as Kirk manages to combine disparate influences that would otherwise seem mutually incompatible. Together with producer-engineer Michael Dubue, he reconciles Brian Wilsons rich sonic palette with the amused melancholy of Leonard Cohen. When asked about these influences Taylor admits these are certainly touchstones. ”Brian Wilson and Leonard Cohen are among many influences that have come to embody what music is to me.” Kirk admits to revisiting Sun Ra, Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane, as well as Italian singers such as Pino Daniele and Paolo Conte, which might explain the cinematic lightness of the new album. When asked about The Velvet Underground he replied reluctantly “I wouldnt say that I sound like Lou Reed,” Kirk explains. “But I also aspire to the leanness that he brings to his lyrics and storytelling.”

Another connection to Lou Reed is the wry humor that is always present in Timber Timbres work, despite the social commentary prevalent in the new songs, such as the album opener “Ask The Community”. “Im glad if the humor comes across,” Kirk says. Its not always recognized, but having said that, Im not always sure when Im joking myself. The electronic elements that characterized Timber Timbres previous album, “Sincerely, Future Pollution make a return on “Lovage,” albeit with a more discrete confidence. “That album became something of a genre study, sitting slightly outside Timber Timbre’s sonic trajectory,” he explains, “as I didnt really have a history with electronic music then. It was very laborious and much more contrived. What’s different about this album is that its much more spontaneous than ‘Sincerely, Future Pollution’ or any of my previous recordings, for that matter.” Kirk developed “Lovage” in close collaboration with Michael Dubue at the producers Studio Cimetière in Quyon, Quebec. “Michael originally invited me to come and contribute to a song he was working on,” Kirk explains, “Because we really hit it off, we ended up putting a whole album together from the song ideas Id been collecting during a couple of housebound years, recovering from a long period of unsavory touring habits and reform from an unhealthy lifestyle.” The collaboration proved so fruitful that Michael Dubue has joined Timber Timbre on keyboards and vocals with Adam Bradley Schreiber completing the current line-up on drums and percussion. “Michael is much more musically accomplished than I am,” Taylor continues. “While Ive often felt limited by my own ability in the past, Mike helped out when I found myself hitting a wall or writing myself into a corner. He often comes up with ideas Id never have thought of on my own or couldn’t execute instrumentally.” Kirk returned to his native Ontario in 2019 after spending a few years in Quebec and Texas. He made it back just in time to sit out the Covid pandemic and regroup. “I moved back to Ontario where I had grown up, a place I left 20 years ago and swore I’d never return to. ‘Holy Motors’ is an homage to this place I love and hate - but also love to hate, he says of the town where he spent the lockdown. But its a good place to be trapped. One could say the same of the sonic landscapes he evokes on Lovage: “Its a wonderful album to be trapped on, a modern masterpiece for troubled times one will find oneself returning to again and again.”