Leif Vollebekk New Ways CD

New Ways is a new album by Montreal’s Leif Vollebekk, his hotly anticipated follow-up to the Polaris Prize finalist Twin Solitude. It’s a record that lives between the kick and the snare, in that instant of feeling before the backbeat.

“The way that it was is the way it should be,” Vollebekk sings on “Phaedrus”—a line that's a memory and a wish. New Ways is that too: the sound of desire in its unfolding. Two years ago, things were changing so fast, and the songwriter didn’t want to forget. “I often think of Leonard Cohen’s line, ‘I hope you’re keeping some kind of record,’” he says. “So I did.” It was like he was pretending you can compose a soundtrack to your own life (which perhaps you can).

In the end, New Ways is a document of everything Vollebekk felt, the way each moment arrived and moved through him. Whereas Twin Solitude was about self-reflection, New Ways is about engaging and changing, touching and being touched. It’s a physical record, with louder and tighter grooves, and the rawest lyrics the musician has ever recorded. A portrait of beauty, desire, longing, risk, remembrance—without an instant of regret. “She's my woman and she loved me so fine,” goes the chorus to one tune. “She'll never be back.”