At the end of 2022, Your Heart Breaks re-released their first two albums—New Ocean Waves and Sailor System, both from 2006—as a double album on Bandcamp as if to lay the groundwork for Clyde Petersen’s next step with his indie-pop outfit: The Wrack Line, a brand new double album (“Surprise, it’s twins!” he joked on Instagram upon revealing the news to his label, Kill Rock Stars, who took it in stride) slated for release this summer. The LP’s 19 tracks represent the best of Petersen’s recording sessions last summer with a studio band featuring members of LAKES, as well as Black Belt Eagle Scout’s Katherine Paul.
But the project’s latest single sees even further collaboration, with Canadian songwriters Christine Fellows and The Weakerthan’s John K. Samson’s backing vocals fleshing out the Canadian travelog “Snow Dusted Ponies”—a song Peterson shares was inspired by a visit to writer/performer Ivan Coyote in the Yukon. “It’s an attempt to understand what an upbringing in the Far North might encompass,” he elaborates. “The overwhelming natural beauty, the subfreezing temperatures, the meaning of family in such a place, and what it is to be queer or ‘other’ in a small town. To be torn between the yet-unknown corners of the world, all the while being called home by the land and people you know so well.”
The literary depth of the track’s lyrics echo those of its collaborators, while the layered instrumental (also featuring Vancouver trombonist Ellen Marple) nods to the all-star lineups of Canadian supergroups like Broken Social Scene and The New Pornographers. Check out the single below, and pre-order The Wrack Line here.
