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More by Matthew Ritchie

Quake

Hard-working rap veteran Quake releases his third album, the confessional Corrado
- by Matthew Ritchie
- Apr 4, 2013
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Sky high

The Wooden Sky bring a special kind of bravado and an epic sound to the Spatz Theatre Thursday.

by Matthew Ritchie

click to enlarge

Gavin Gardner has a bad case of déjà vu.

After touring extensively around North America on behalf of Every Child a Daughter, Every Moon a Sun, the ambitious third record from his roots-rock outfit The Wooden Sky, Gardner found himself on a five-week trip to Europe, pushing an album he'd spent nearly a year already promoting.

"It's a bit of a weird experience to have similar conversations with people I had eight months ago about the same songs," he says. "But it was kind of neat because it forced me to reflect upon what we had done and why we had done it."

Every Child a Daughter is a stark contrast from its predecessors.After the band's previous tour of the UK, Gardner returned home to Toronto to find their studio time had been double-booked. With no tour planned in the immediate future, Gardner delved into his record collection, fuelling lengthy writing sessions in the seclusion of his home. For the first time in years, the band wasn't able to road test their songs, leading to Daughter's recording process taking on an "intimate" and "timid feel."

"I really wanted to make a record that you could sit down and listen to while you're having breakfast," he says. "Which is not the ambition of many records."

The result is a much more spacious and confident set of songs, even though industry heads misunderstood it on first listen. "I know our record label was really nervous because they were expecting a big rock record," he says, "and that's not what we had in mind."

But fans and critics took notice, with UK music magazine Q recently giving the album a four-star review and naming it The One to Buy.

As the tour progresses Stateside, Gardner says the band has been exploring the album's subtleties and powerful atmospherics live, giving their sound an even more "epic" feel than on the original album. "I've been describing it in my head as having a different kind of 'bravado,'" he says. "Now that we've made this record, I want to make one where that comes across too."

The Wooden Sky w/Wildlife, Thursday, November 1 at Spatz Theatre, 1855 Trollope, 8pm, $22.50

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