Field Guide (aka Dylan MacDonald) is set to release his self-titled new album on 28th October on Birthday Cake Records. He recorded the album alongside long-time friend and collaborator Kris Ulrich in a woodstove-heated cabin near Riding Mountain National Park during one of Manitoba’s coldest winters in years. This harsh environmental setting seems so at odds with the sweet sounds of his new single Leave You Lonely whose spare and evocative delivery could have been conceived on a lazy summer day and that voice could certainly melt snow.
Vocally Dylan shines throughout, and the suggestion that the album rests at the intersection of Leif Vollebek, M. Ward and Andy Shauf nails it. It’s a gorgeous song and melody, the latter being a key part of Dylan’s creative process:
“Melody is what makes words fall out of my mouth, it’s disarming,” he says. “When I find a melody that represents my internal world, I drop my guard. I allow the words to appear out of thin air without judgement. A lot of these songs came to life that way. I wasn’t trying to make anything, but the songs became a home for words that I wasn’t yet ready to write on the page.”
The record was written in Dylan’s Toronto apartment and whilst sitting at his kitchen table in Winnipeg during small periods of procrastination or waiting on people, which, in a breath of serendipity, gave us the track ‘Leave You Lonely’.
He says: “Leave You Lonely was written while I waited for a friend to show up for a recording session… I’m glad they were late,” he says. “…it’s about devotion. It’s about fighting complacency. Having doubts is human, but swallowing those feelings can often lead us into a haze of disconnection. It’s rare to hold only one feeling at a time and I’ve been learning to embrace the myriad of emotions that come with being alive, and in love. This song represents a beautiful and imperfect love, the recording is the same — no editing, a one take (and sometimes out of tune) vocal.”
The album was put together like a well-loved family recipe…it was recorded in stages, giving the album time to breathe and its unhurried nature soon drew a parallel with the real-life process of creating it. “Having time between the different sessions slowed the process,” Dylan says. “It allowed Kris and I to reflect, pivot and re-record parts which hadn’t quite captured the right feeling. We obsessed over sounds and how things felt to allow the recording to feel like a performance.”