If The Unicorns taught us anything, it’s that sometimes you have to go all in on the silliness to get to the root of one’s existential angst. This idea is central to fellow Montreal avant-indie act Fireball Kid, whose third LP Deer Path Turn to a Shortcut takes a sobering perspective on get-togethers that are anything but. “I’ve been writing about partying hard for almost as long and hard as I’ve been partying,” shared songwriter Colin Ratchford upon the project’s announcement. “But there’s a way the hangovers and hangups of your predecessors echo into your own life and mix with your own, and I think there’s a lot of sad, ghostly magic there… There’s a lot of death and strangeness mixed into partying that we don’t always want to look directly at, but that doesn’t mean we should stop celebrating. Everybody is just kind of [soldiering] on with a few memories of dead friends flickering into their mind while you share a smoke with them.”
It’s this pour-one-out philosophy that informs the music on the record, with its latest single “At Your Leisure” aligning with the Alex G school of balladry that matches reverent songcraft with playful instrumental flourishes. Joined by Ura Star, with whom Fireball Kid released their first album, the track feels like friends gathered around a campfire, swapping stories and passing out one by one as the blunt makes its way around the circle. “I’m moved by the hush around family members and friends who were lost young,” shares Fireball Kid of the track and its central players—ghosts, weed, and “sad forest magic”—“and the way the memories of when they were still around seem to become a backlight for the empty bedrooms and circles of people left behind. They’re still walking beside us, but we can’t quite reach out and touch them.”
Check out the video for the track below, which sees Fireball Kid, Ura Star, and friends eerily lit by digicam lighting, as if ghosts themselves. Deer Path Turn to a Shortcut arrives May 8 via Born Losers—pre-order a physical copy here.
