Jennifer Castle

1. Summer
2. Neverride
3. Powers
4. Way of the Crow
5. You Don't Have to Be
6. Misguided
7. Remembering
8. Poor as Him
9. The Friend

Jennifer Castle’s debut under her own name captures a distinctive Canadian artist using a vivid palette of subtle textures and colours. Timeless in tone and dense with mystery and mysticism, Castlemusic constructs a sonic environment that reverberates like a world long lost, steeped in longing and foggy like a half-remembered dream.

A quiet fixture in Canada’s folk underground and prolific collaborator, Castle entered the studio in Toronto with a set of reflective songs inspired by the rhythm of life, birth, and death. Accompanied by Dave Clarke and engineer Jeff McMurrich, they set out to use natural room sound and reverb to capture the essence of Castle’s songs, ultimately creating an album of stark honesty and authentic beauty, that breathes with the spirit of the rooms where it was recorded.

Pulling in performances by friends from the tight-knit music community which surrounds the couple, the album’s distinctive sound was built deliberately yet naturally. Castlemusic contains spontaneous first takes, recorded with numerous room microphones. Piano, organ, flute, vibes, pedal steel and Castle’s trademark guitalele are woven together in a wash of hues -- never in competition and always with a sense of spaciousness.

A stunning work of cosmic lyrical content, ‘Powers’ shifts and sways with perilous grace as warm guitar tones invite listeners on an otherworldly trip. ‘Remembering’ is naked and searing in its intensity, and ‘Poor as Him,’ the album’s most percussive song, sews swaths of reverb and tremolo into a fuzz guitar fade-out.

Castlemusic is an honest and remarkably wise album in the traditional sense and one that refuses to compromise to the attention span of modernity. Instead, it calmly reflects the longing, mortality, and undeniable beauty of life, lingering on the smells and cadence of the every day and the fleeting moments of truth. Those with patient ears will mark this recording as a new classic in the tradition of Canadian folk music. 

Liner Notes

All songs written and performed by Jennifer Castle on guitars, pianos, and organs except for: Stew Cookes on pedal steel (2, 4), Paul Aucoin on vibraphone (2, 3, 4), Ryan Driver on flute (2, 6) and organ (7), Mike Overton on upright bass (4, 7, 9), Paul Mortimer on electric guitar (8), acoustic guitar (3), and bass (8), David Clarke on electric guitar (1, *0, and drums/percussion (3, 7, 8).

Recorded and Mixed Summer-Winter 2010 by Jeff McMurrich at 6 Nassau, Toronto. 'Way Of The Crow' recorded by Jeff McMurrich at The Music Gallery, Toronto. Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering, Montreal. Additional mastering by Jeff Elliott at Fedge Mastering, Toronto.

Produced by Jennifer Castle and David Clarke with Jeff McMurrich.

Design by Colin Bergh
Concept by David Clarke

Cover painting 'Drawback' (2009) by Mira Dancy

Thanks to David Clarke, Jeff McMurrich, Ian and James at Flemish Eye, Paul Mortimer, Colin Bergh, Davida Nemeroff, Victoria Cheong, Blue Fog Recordings, $100, Isabel Park, William Skjelmose, Dan and Alison, and all the folks who help out with the daily things, every day!