Montreal songwriter and producer Jesse Mac Cormack has released his new single “All At Once,” from his upcoming album SOLO. Mac Cormack has also shared a live performance video of the track, directed by Félix-Antoine Boutin and Thomas Leblanc-Murray. SOLO will be released digitally on April 8 via Secret City Records and is currently available to pre-order.

Of the shoot, Félix-Antoine says, “To clash with the title of Jesse’s new album, SOLO, I decided to recreate that unique energy that musicians have amongst themselves, without artifice, behind the scenes. As a theatre director, I enjoy highlighting the essence and the sincerity of a live performance. Thomas Leblanc Murray as a director with a great rhythmic sense allowed our ideas to reach their full potential.”
“Watching that song come alive was a good buzz,” reveals Mac Cormack. “It was easy and felt very natural. Surrounded by such an amazing team, it was just about closing my eyes and trusting everyone around me. Absolutely loved it.”

In the deepest depths of the Pandemic, with a relationship in its ending, Mac Cormack recalls sending a text to his therapist: “I’m not meeting with you every week just to hang out,” the bilingual musician wrote. “Je veux que ça saigne”—for the work to “bleed.” To mean something. The next time they met, his therapist explained: “That message you sent me? You were really sending it to yourself. You were taking a decision.”

That decision—to move forward, to change and have the courage to love yourself—is the journey of the past two years and also of SOLO, which gleams and shivers and pulses with the heartbeat of an artist in beautiful evolution. A softer album than his debut LP Now (2019), it is nonetheless riven by the fear and flood of disappointment that marked these recent years—and the singer’s childhood.

As on Now, Mac Cormack plays almost every instrument himself, surrounded by a soundtrack of one. Across 10 rippling tracks, the singer summons a sonic world that’s razor-edged and intimate, influenced by the textured electronics of James Blake, Little Dragon, Caribou and SUUNS. Drum machines stutter under blooms of synths; curses float below swirls of loving sound. Mac Cormack has hidden so much discomfort inside an album that’s warm and glimmering, like a storm cloud before its strike. Even now, long after the season’s passed, there’s lightning in the air.    

Multi-talented, Mac Cormack also produced all the volumes of Helena Deland’s acclaimed Altogether Unaccompanied, as well as several recordings for Rosie Valland, Philippe Brach, Sara-Danielle, Lonny and many others. A home-studio wizard and blazing guitarist, he was tapped to salute Stevie Ray Vaughan and Muddy Waters at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. Jesse has forged a solid background that has been influenced by notable encounters and collaborations with such bands as Patrick Watson, The Barr Brothers, Cat Power, Half Moon Run and Cri.

Photo Courtesy: François Ollivier