It’s a rainy Wednesday afternoon in Toronto and over at Tacos El Asador, Julie Doiron isn’t sure what she should be telling people about her emotionally complex and wonderfully powerful new LP, So Many Days.
“It’s been three and a half years since the last record and there’s been a lot of ups and downs,” she says. “I just turned 40 in June and I’m totally fine with that and loving it. But I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing anymore."
So Many Days was made with Rick White, Doiron’s former mate in Eric’s Trip, and it follows some of the hardest times in her love life. She’s chronicled such feelings before, and the resulting songs can be charming and relatable on one hand, but they can also take the shape of primal releases, a personal unburdening that is raw, plain and unmistakable. In this regard, Doiron is one of the most revealing songwriters of our time and, as such, finds it curious when journalists press her for more with questions like, "So, tell me about this record."
“The reason I’m having a hard time talking about it is because it’s just a collection of songs I happened to write that I needed to record,” she says. “It’s not a concept record, it’s just songs that needed to come out. I kinda wish the songs were just speaking for themselves."
“I think, mostly, if you listen, you’ll know that this or that happened,” Doiron adds, smiling. “Or at least I was feeling bad at this point but now I’m feeling good. It’s weird, I’m just trying to figure life out in general.”
Even 10 albums into a solo career (that has veered off into many collaborative efforts as well), Doiron says it was particularly scary sending So Many Days out into the world. She didn’t even hear a final version before it was packaged, trusting White and his vision completely, as she did when he commandeered recording sessions for Eric’s Trip back when she was a teenager.
In the end, So Many Days is a relatively sparse, minimal affair with Doiron and White handling all the instrumentation and highlighting the moody poignancy of these compositions.
“When I went into the studio with these songs, I wanted to make it full and lush with lots of vocals and layering,” Doiron recalls. “There are a few songs that had that but whenever Rick and I would work on things and say, ‘What can we add?’ Rick would say, ‘The song’s really strong as it is. You don’t need to put in anything else.’”
It’s heartening to hear an artist like Julie Doiron, who’s won Junos and Bucky Awards, been nominated for Polaris Music Prizes and influenced and mentored so many younger artists, still talking about learning on the job. She doesn’t take her gifts or shortcomings for granted, and there’s a playfully optimistic glint in her eye when she contemplates it all.
“I’m 40 now,” she says, raising her fist in the air, triumphantly. “I’m starting the second cycle now and I’m gonna start seizing all sorts of opportunities.”
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Julie Doiron's So Many Days: full album stream