Slow Leaves

“I don’t write sad songs, I write lonely songs,” declares Slow Leaves in the liner notes to his 2025 album In Solitude, For Company. His assertion could serve as a thesis statement for a body of work with recurrent themes of love, loss, loneliness, memory, and time. Slow Leaves is the project of Winnipeg’s Grant Davidson who, in spite of the more conventional approach, quit his job at thirty-three to begin a music career in earnest. Awarded Western Canadian Music Awards Songwriter of the Year, his folk and psych-rock inclinations are rooted in fingerpicking songwriters of the past, but live firmly in today’s post-genre landscape. On his newest release and sixth album of new material, The Ruins of Things Unfinished, Davidson explores his thoughts on ambition and the long setting sun of a life dedicated to art and family. “I’ve somehow made a career of self-perceived failure,” he writes. “I’ve often reflected on whether that mindset fulfills its own prophecy; quite possibly. But I think at heart I’m not seeking greatness, at least not outside my own little world.” The Ruins of Things Unfinished is an album that looks for beauty in the rubble of life’s wreckage. It came out May 1 on Birthday Cake Records and Make My Day Records in G/S/A/Benelux.