Doused in a flood of dark, swirling post-rock and deeply personal experience is Alex Henry Foster's epic single, Summertime Departures, finally released in the UK following over 500,000 views on YouTube. This extremely moving single is just one part of "Windows in the Sky", the first solo album from Alex Henry Foster, released in Europe on April 17th on Hopeful Tragedy Records.
"For a son, a father's death is often the end of innocence, and the illusions that come with it," says Alex Henry Foster. He speaks from experience: the loss of his own father from cancer in 2016 prompted him to put his group, successful Montreal underground rock collective Your Favorite Enemies, on ice and hole up in Tangier, Morocco, trying to make sense of his loss and the ways that the world felt differently now. This "emotional detox" led him to the songs that would compose Windows In The Sky, chronicling his dark nights of the soul, and taking the listener on a journey through grief and confusion that's as uplifting as it is challenging, and as honest and powerful as any you're going to experience this year.
The songs are cathartic, thrilling, uncovering traces of hope and transcendence amid Foster's introspection. The roiling tumult of Summertime Departures is a powerful musing on the finality of mortality, on what remained of his father and his legacy after his death. Its momentous sonic storm captures the confusion and anguish within Foster - it is, he says, about those times when we are "lost in the winds, when there's no right or wrong" - but, he adds, its theme is his belief that "there is permanence amid the most painful of sorrows, and love, just like stone, will endure."
Tangier offered the isolation and anonymity Foster craved. He took inspiration from the call to prayer from the local mosque and began to write songs, many songs, "to purge what I had inside - just keep writing, writing, writing. Like some emotional detox. I wrote like I was in a trance, abandoning myself to the emotion." He returned to the music that had inspired him as a teenager - Glenn Branca's turbulent, sweeping guitar symphonies and the scourging No Wave of Swans - and lost himself in performances by local musicians who would chase the same melody and rhythm for forty minutes at a time.
A year into his stay, Foster's bandmates visited him in Tangier to see how he was doing, he played them these fragments he'd been working upon. Soon, their week-long stay extended to six months, as they collaborated with Foster to bring his songs to fruition, recording in a tiny studio he'd built on the busiest strip in Tangier. The results of this journey are epic, as you will find out.
"Windows in the Sky" was made available in Canada last November through Hopeful Tragedy Records / Sony Music Entertainment / The Orchard and will be released in Europe on April 17th.
See Alex Henry Foster's full band support And You Will Know Us As The Trail of Dead across Europe this February/March at the dates below.
Feb 29 Sat Brighton, Patterns
Mar 01 Bristol, Exchange
Mar 02 Nottingham, The Bodega
Mar 03 Tue Edinburgh, The Mash House
Mar 04 Wed Manchester, Night & Day Cafe
Mar 05 Thu Newcastle upon Tyne, Riverside Newcastle
Mar 07 Sat Leicester, The Cookie
Mar 08 Sun Huddersfield, The Parish
Mar 10 Tue London, The Dome
Mar 11 Wed St. Albans, The Horn
Windows in the Sky - TRACKLISTING:
01. The Pain That Bonds (The Beginning Is the End)
02. Winter is Coming In
03. Shadows of Our Evening Tides
04. The Hunter (By the Seaside Window)
05. Snowflakes in July
06. Summertime Departures
07. Lavender Sky
