Introducing Jon McKiel & The Go! Team play Roundhouse this Saturday

Jon McKiel

New album Hex released May 3rd on You've Changed Records
Listen to the title track: https://jonmckiel.bandcamp.com/album/hex

The songs of Jon McKiel are born of the bruised marshlands of remote New Brunswick, from the craggy shores of the Atlantic coast; places where nature is a powerful wonder and the made-world is in slow decay. His new album, Hex, is a bloodshot pop record steeped in our dystopian present, tempered, across its ten tracks, by an existential umami. It’s the follow-up to 2020’s cult favourite Bobby Joe Hope, which Aquarium Drunkard called “an unlikely masterpiece” and Gorilla vs. Bear listed as one of their favourites of that god-forsaken year.

After two solid decades of refining his practice, during the creation process for Bobby Joe Hope, McKiel unlocked new sampling techniques, fundamentally changing the way he makes music. Hex sees that practice extended into even more evocative terrain. Performed and produced again in close collaboration with JOYFULTALK’s Jay Crocker, the duo offer up another collection of songs as disquieting as they are comforting. Expertly evoked by Paul Henderson’s twisted collage on the cover, Hex is equal parts flower field and burning building.

The music moves subtly between moods, carrying themes of fate, doom, family, love and distrust in the digital age. The eponymous lead track and first single is an eerie, subterranean banger whose looped percussion and dirt-nasty bassline bring to mind lo fi hip hop flipping early 70s Gene Clark. 

"'Hex' is a song that came about from sampling my voice and guitar. Lyrically it wonders what darknesses might be at at play, personally or collectively. Sometimes observing systems and people on the brink of collapse, it feels as though there is a hex on all of us ~ a self imposed one given that the game was so long ago fixed. Social media puts a magnifying glass over all this, while the great reflection keeps our attention." Jon McKiel

Regardless of mood, the songs are all adorned with the world-weary poetics heads have come to expect from McKiel. In his music, what might otherwise be construed as paranoia or pessimism, is softened by a genuine sense of longing and tenderness. His lyrics combine natural elements with bits of fantasy and lucid dreamscapes, all tangled with the transmuted horrors of our thoroughly modern present. When McKiel sings of “memories cooked down into usernames” or how “the color of time has gone from green to grey”, the listener is carried to the heart of our grim realities. When he suggests that “one song could kill the king”, we’re reminded that there may just be some dusty magic out there worth believing in.

Pre-order: https://youvechangedrecords.com/product/jon-mckiel-hex/