Happy release day to Toronto singer/songwriter Bryce Thomas‘ Across The Neuro Seas!
Bryce made Across The Neuro Seas — his first collection since 2015’s Immovable Feast — in his home studio during a month-long creative burst at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic lockdown.
Curating the songs as if they were a short story collection, Bryce didn’t hold back musically, performing all vocals, guitars and keyboard tracks along with a variety of other instruments, only making exceptions for drums and some bass— performed remotely by Marito Marques and Chris Monster, respectively—a horn section, and additional vocals by his wife Lisanne. Tracks were later mixed by Josh Bowman and mastered by João Carvalho.
On songs such as first single “Perpetual Motion Machines,” “Young Lovers” and “Summer Nights In Summertime,” Bryce exquisitely captures a range of emotions in an immediate manner through his distinctive brand of folk-rock, while expressing the power of experience elsewhere on “Widow’s Walk” and “Hope And Chance,” two songs that had sat on the shelf for 25 years until finding their moment.
Indeed, when asked to describe his musical evolution, Bryce gives a straightforward answer: “Long.” Making music has been a part of his life since early childhood, and he became an active figure in the Toronto indie scene of the 1990s, recording an album with his art rock band Pellet at the city’s leading rock radio station Q107 and later creating and hosting a weekly songwriter’s circle at Queen Street West club Holy Joe’s that ran for two years.
During that period, Bryce was a regular on Toronto stages and a passionate supporter of numerous Canadian singer/songwriters of that era. Across The Neuro Seas pays tribute to some of them with the song “Up Around The Bend,” incorporating lyrics by Hawksley Workman, Joel Plaskett, Sarah Slean and Danny Michel.
The final results on Across The Neuro Seas clearly show that he made the right choice. While there are sure to be many “what I did during my pandemic lockdown” records on the horizon, Bryce Thomas’s Across The Neuro Seas bears all the hallmarks of a true folk-pop auteur, with its timeless sound sure to remain relevant long after we’re allowed to once again get close to our loved ones.
Get Bryce Thomas’ Across The Neuro Seas from Bandcamp, and watch the video for “Perpetual Motion Machines.”
