The anthemic “Yankee Swap” is described by the indispensable Christmas Underground blog as having ‘a big, beautiful chorus, with a bass saxophone that vibrates everything inside of you’. A glorious song, all the more so given that it marks the Canadian’s return to songwriting following a number of years spent dealing with some very serious personal issues. Michael released his first album in nearly a decade, The Winter of our Discotheque, in 2020.
Michael had this to say about the songwriting process in an interview with Canadian beats in 2020 ' I’m an artist, writer, and performer currently based in East-Central Ontario. In the mid to late ’00s, I worked as an accompanist and contributing member in a number of my friend’s great projects – The Burning Hell, Evening Hymns, Weird Lines – and released a few EP’s and records of my own. My writing is personal and confessional; I have a difficult time writing about things that I myself have not experienced, about places I haven’t been, or people I haven’t met. I’d sooner write songs about Oshawa than Memphis. Writing has served as a genuinely cathartic process for me recently – I experienced some pretty challenging adversity in my twenties, and writing has allowed me to make sense of it; like a sort of narrative therapy- and I think that shows in the work.
The enigmatic Frank Ene's solo record lives in a magical world where Serge Gainsbourg fronts Yellow Magic Orchestra. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 17, 2022
Swirling goth-rock from the big voice behind '90s outfit Sunshine Blind, featuring a who's-who of dark underground denizens. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 31, 2020