Canadian songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist Mitch Davis is announcing his new album The Haunt, out April 29th via Arbutus Records. It’s an impressive debut, with Davis writing all the songs, playing all the instruments, with much of it recorded on equipment that he also built himself, all from his home studio during the 2020 lockdown. 

The Haunt is a collection of soulful songs about the ending of relationships and the loneliness of isolation, it nonetheless brims with musicality and optimism—a record that could only have been made by Mitch Davis. Davis has also announced North American tour dates and will be playing SXSW next month.

To celebrate the announcement, he’s sharing the lead single “Let It Die” with a Laurent E. Malo directed video.

Mitch on the single, “Let it die is another happy sounding song I wrote while pretty bummed out. It’s the last song I wrote for the record and I made 90% of it really quickly over a couple days. One of the mornings, I think after I had recorded the bass, I woke up with a really sore neck.. so I knew it must have some groove. Lyrically it’s about calling it quits really early on when you sense there might not be a future, sparing yourselves from drawing it out in a painful way.

It’s one of two songs on “The Haunt” that are guitar-centric. It’s funny, pretty much all of my friends started on guitars and are now experimenting with synths and beat-making, but I started with piano, drums, and Fruity-Loops so there’s still a total novelty to guitar and bass.”

Despite so much going on behind the scenes, The Haunt is a breezy, upbeat listen, very much in tune with the spirit of 70s pop that Davis loves for the way it strikes a balance between complexity and brevity. These are composed, layered songs made with care, but also made to make you smile. Not only fun for the listener, The Haunt sounds like it was fun to make—and it was. ”As soon as I start working on something, I don’t get tired. I can’t,” says Davis. “It’s like I get drunk on the music or something.” Yet the record is also very personal, pondering over the ways memories, both good and bad, can continue to linger long after the people and things that inspired them have disappeared into the ether—thus the title of The Haunt.

Photo Courtesy: Richmond Lam