It has been a month or two short of four years since we checked out the self-titled debut album from Canadian band The Written Years. It was a masterful persuasion of open and smouldering temptation cast from an original blend of post and alternative rock with folk and melodic inspirations, what the band called “Winter Music”. At the time we were very confidence that the world would be hearing a great deal of the band over coming years. Since then they have been conspicuous by their silence, literally in the case of one of their members. Now they are back with new single Lost In You Now, a song which shows the years have been well spent on further honing the band’s sound and its compelling melodic temptation.
After the acclaim luring release of their album, the Vancouver based quartet were soon working on new songs for its successor. It was a creative fire and eagerness though soon halted when vocalist/ guitarist and primary songwriter Wade Ouellet experienced a sudden and unexplained speech loss. It caused him “to refrain from speaking in near-isolation for months “ and the band to go on hold; a hiatus compounded by guitarist Alex Richardson and drummer Kane Enders both independently experiencing sudden and dramatic losses of immediate family members. As people and band recovered, a re-assessment of those already written tracks saw songs originally centred on “coming-of-age stories” became darker more intimate explorations of “suburbia, infatuation, and forbidden love.” The Written Years now have their second album poised for a Spring release in 2018 and you can anticipate that it will be richly hued with the trauma of the past years; indeed its opening two lines echo that time…”I wish I could find life inside the fire / I wish I could sing, though my voice has died.”
New single Lost In You Now is a potent teaser for the album, the song as the full-length produced by Ryan Worsley (Dear Rouge, Said The Whale) with the band. It opens with the tender caress of a synth, its melancholic grace soon nurturing a melodic stroll with darker rhythms. Ouellet’s voice similarly has a low-spirited breath, his tones as impressive and potent as ever with harmonies just as elegant around his open heart. The song continues to saunter with an infectious energy and character, its air carrying a great eighties new wave/pop breeze which colludes sublimely with the track’s fresh indie enterprise cast by the imagination of the foursome.
It may have been a time which you can imagined seriously threatened the future of the band but The Written Years has come back, going by Lost In You Now, even stronger and with a new aspect to their creativity which makes it very easy to eagerly anticipate their forthcoming album.
Also keep your eyes peeled for a great video accompanying Lost In You Now featuring Kevin, a guy the band met at East Vancouver’s Waldorf Hotel after being captivated by the individual passion and energy in his dancing.
Lost In You Now is out now through all online retailers and streaming services and @ http://spoti.fi/2AZA7e9
https://www.facebook.com/writtenyears https://twitter.com/writtenyears https://writtenyears.bandcamp.com/
Pete RingMaster 13/12/2017
Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright
