There’s a complicated kind of survivor’s guilt that emerges after the unexpected death of someone very close to you. In addition to a flood of grief and pain, you’re left carrying a jumbled mess of stories and memories, ones that—when a loss happens out of the blue—you’ve likely had no time to process. Composed after a friend’s sudden death, Rae Spoon’s latest album comes out of that place. The Calgary-born, Montreal-based artist made a name for themself in Canada’s alt-country/folk community—in addition to being a snappy dresser and a highly skilled musician, Spoon is transgender and favours the gender-neutral pronoun “they”—and there’s a folk songwriter’s directness and eye for scene-setting detail in these songs. “He was wearing your shirt / a month after you were gone,” Spoon sings. “I saw him from across the bar / and nearly passed out.”
This raw candour is framed in spare, punchy electro-pop arrangements that prevent I Can’t Keep All of Our Secrets from collapsing under its weighty emotions. The production is gently experimental—the echoing vocal effects on New Order–style opener “Ocean Blue” evoke whalesong without sounding corny, while the distortion and sleepy backbeat on “Ghost of a Boy” suggest a welcome haunting. The later tracks feel less developed, but the album hangs together thanks to Spoon’s radiant, focused vocals, which fall somewhere between Sinead O’Connor and Jimmy Somerville. All eulogies should be this affecting.
Playlist picks: “Crash Landing,” “When I Said There Was an End to Love I Was Lying,” “Ghost of a Boy”
Rae Spoon plays the Gladstone (1214 Queen St. W.) on Jan. 27.
