In the fertile soil of the Philadelphia indie scene, few figures are as quietly industrious as Michael Cormier-O’Leary. Whether he is steering the ship at Dear Life Records, anchoring the rhythms of Friendship and 2nd Grade, or composing for the instrumental ensemble Hour, Cormier-O’Leary’s fingerprints can be found over a lot of the textured folk and indie-rock of the last decade. Now, the prolific songwriter and producer—known for his work with Sachiko Kanenobu, Wendy Eisenberg, and Carmen Perry—has announced his latest solo endeavour: the EP Proof Enough, arriving February 25 via Dear Life Records (order via Bandcamp).
Accompanying the announcement is the lead and sole single, “Marilyn”, that follows a five-year-old protagonist who retreats into her crayon drawings to escape the domestic noise of her home; Cormier-O’Leary shares:
I had been listening to the Roches a lot when I wrote this song. I love how they manage to tell compact family dramas and bring them to life with their otherworldly harmonies. ‘Runs in the Family’ would still be a Great song regardless, but something essential would be lost if it were only sung by one of them alone. The use of multiple voices in complex harmony illustrates the multi-generational tension of the story being told. So I wrote ‘Marilyn’ for three-part harmony to match the three members of the family. Two of the voices are mine and the other is my friend Heeyoon Won’s–who plays guitar in 22º Halo and has a project called Boosegumps. It’s a story about a five year old named Marilyn who escapes into her crayon drawings to block out the noise of her home life, and her parents’ desire but inability to do the same. In the song’s outro, there are two restated melodies that oscillate back and forth chromatically, suggesting a family unit out of sync or at least having a particularly bad day. I commissioned a drawing from an actual five year old named Leia to accompany the video on Youtube. Thanks for the beautiful drawing, Leia. Her family is great and nothing like the family described in the song. It’s only a work of fiction.
Recorded largely in his home basement in 2022, Proof Enough blends autobiography with speculative storytelling to piece together a family drama across six songs–a raw, honest testament to the unspoken bonds that define us.
On the EP, he shares:
This is a collection of songs I’ve been chipping away since 2022. I had envisioned an album of family dramas, but as time passed, I just kept refining these same fews songs. Demoing is central to my process, so the instrumentals as heard here were recorded pretty early on. I thought I’d end up redoing it all at a studio, but time trudged on and I never got around to that. The music I began writing after this batch had no discernible connection, so a full album seemed more and more out of reach. I stepped back for a while and then one day it hit me that people release EPs all the time. How novel! So I opened up my demos, finalized the lyrics, re-recorded all the vocals, and sent it off to my friend and collaborator Lucas Knapp to mix and master. It was a long yet ultimately simple process that preserved the seed of inspiration from which these songs grew out of.
There’s biography (Del, a song about my father’s relationship to his father), fiction (Marilyn, entirely made up about people I don’t know), speculative fiction (Sky is Blue, a song about a dead person returning to describe to a loved one what it was like to die), autobiography (Pressed Flowers, written after my wedding, filled with fear that a day like that is so precious and always at risk of being forgotten), and some hybrids (Gouache and Staring, two songs that are both made up yet deeply rooted in feelings I feel).
I took the title Proof Enough from Sense and Sensibility, where Elinor says to her sister Marianne “What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering? […] believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have produced proof enough of a broken heart even for you”. She is concealing the pain of a lost love, but I found “proof enough of a broken heart” to be very compelling in a familial context too. How much do our loved ones know how we feel and must we prove our pain in order for it to become real to them?
The cover painting is by Montreal-based artist Flore De Ris, who makes music as Ada Lea. I had seen the image on her Instagram and thought it was a finished painting, but the image I had gravitated towards was actually a work in progress shot. Given the nature of the EP, it seemed more appropriate to use an unfinished painting as the cover, and thankfully Ali obliged. Check out her work, she is a truly amazing artist.
Pre-Order via Bandcamp: https://michaelcormier.bandcamp.com/album/proof-enough
