Leaf Rapids

On the third Leaf Rapids record, Velvet Paintings, veteran Winnipeg songwriter Keri Latimer makes room for the world. Over a lush palette of roots music—ethereal folk, driving country, and wiry honky-tonk—she shifts her gaze to the environments around her, observing and reflecting on their movements and the movements of the people who direct their motion. While the JUNO Award-winning Latimer has always been a keen seer and interpreter of places and people—as evidenced on Leaf Rapids' globetrotting, identity-investigating 2019 album Citizen Alien—she's never focused her pen outward to the extent she does in the songs of Velvet Paintings. "I'm trying to explore more hopeful areas of this world," she explains. "And I think I just let go of a lot of things."

All over Velvet Paintings, Latimer refuses to shy away from the tough parts of being alive, but that hope creates the gossamer thread that ties it all together. The shuffling title track starts the journey with a personal resolution: "When I get my shit together, I'll be a force to reckon with," Latimer sings. But she quickly zooms out to consider the conditions that have made her feel like she didn't have it together in the first place. "I have heard—but can't believe—a billionaire can fall asleep reclining on a golden heap while others waste away." On "Fast Romantic," she recalls a whirlwind romance under fluorescent Dollarama lights, filling the story out with the slick textures of commercialism. With "Silver Fillings," she considers the metal receivers in her mouth and imagines what messages might be transmitted from the future, lamenting our predilection for destruction: "Why is it so hard to love?" Latimer and Joanna Miller harmonize over a softly swooning pedal steel. "It's a miracle we're here at all."

For Latimer, the shift in process to an even more observational approach to songwriting—allowing the songs and subjects to come, guiding them as little as possible, and being open to receiving them—has heralded a rejuvenation in her feelings about the practice. With Velvet Paintings, free of ambition, loaded with letting go, and armed with an acute recognition of all the things she loves about the thing she loves, Latimer and her co-conspirators have sculpted a remarkably organic offering in a body of work already notable for its naturality.

Part of the letting go on Velvet Paintings involved a relinquishing of control in the arranging of songs and in the studio—an easier surrender to handle when your creative partners are as good as the team behind this record. Devin Latimer (bass), Joanna Miller (drums and vocals), and Chris Dunn (guitars) make up the rest of Leaf Rapids; Bill Western (pedal steel), Geoff Hilhorst (keys), Natanielle Felicitas (cello), and John Paul Peters (violin) round out the studio contributions. Peters also mixed, mastered, and co-produced the album alongside Latimer.

She cedes the spotlight completely for Miller's own dreamy "Night Shift," a song about the strange and restless wee hours, when Miller, a kind of custodian of the night, is naturally most awake. "Paramjit's Sonnet," too, is mostly the words of Paramjit Singh, who Latimer was paired up with for a program bringing together local songwriters and senior citizens; rendered by Latimer in a delicate lilt, Singh's sentiments of devotion are both blissful and earthbound, romantic and melancholy. The band's nuanced arrangement on "In The Woods" spooks and unsettles as the strangeness of the unknown descends. Their laid back groove on "Trepidatious Celebrations" sets the scene as Latimer is handed a "birthday present wrapped in obituaries," acknowledging simultaneously the fleeting nature of everything and the significance of marking time. On "Starling to Starling," she turns her gaze to the natural world to explore the bonds of love. And finally, Latimer pulls up a seat curbside on an abandoned couch for "Insomniac Show," as down-home twang soundtracks an aimless round of people-watching and she invites us all to join: "What brings you here this fine evening? Grab a seat and watch the world explode."

With Velvet Paintings, Leaf Rapids doesn't simply make room for the world; they invite it in. What could be more hopeful?