If Leif Vollebekk’s record Twin Solitudes in 2017 was a personal, self-reflective journey tinged with heartbreak and an existential yearning for meaning, New Ways is distinctively more tender, still personal— but now for someone else.

The Montreal songwriter creates scenes, poetic memories, and whispered conversations that depict moments and stories that we are not a part of but listening to as they unfold.

Vollebekk’s reverent attention to the small details has always been the softly shining star of his work, and here they not only bring his lyrics to technicolour vibrancy, they also equally share the stage with the figures of his songs.

“Lightning evening in the holy highlands/Down in the hall up against the wall/I know you’re struggling what to call it/Why you gotta call it anything at all?” he observes during a quiet conversation in “Hot Tears,” making the setting just as significant as the dialogue.

As he sings about past experiences with longing and affection, pain and joy, his words are warm. There are no traces of bitterness in his soulful voice. In “Never Be Back,” he is no jilted lover, only wistfully honest: “She’s my woman and she loved me so fine/She’ll never be back.”

Much like the record’s namesake, Vollebekk remembers these moments and sees them differently, “looking at the sun through my eyelids.” He’s sees them in new ways.

Best Track: Never Be Back

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