Alana Yorke ran out of air. Years before the Mount Uniacke musician debuted the art-pop Dream Magic—an album The Coast hailed upon its 2015 release as “vast and otherworldly”—she was a graduate student at Dalhousie researching underwater invertebrates. The work involved scuba diving. She’d been collecting samples at the end of a long day when her oxygen tank went empty. The moment terrified Yorke; it was the kind of memory she couldn’t shake easily. (The 42-year-old described feeling “hidden and tucked away” to The Coast in 2012.) Traumatic as it was, it also fed into the creation of Yorke’s newest album, Destroyer, set for release through Paper Bag Records on May 17.
The album is a sonic feat. And that’s only half of the story.
‘I felt like this was my medicine’
The year was 2016, and Yorke was back home after touring her debut record. There had been dates across the Maritimes with her husband and collaborative partner, Ian Bent. Toronto. Ottawa. Montreal. Long hours on the Trans-Canada Highway in a compact SUV.
“When you create something, you think you’re never going to create anything again, because you’re completely absorbed, and you put everything you have into it,” Yorke says, speaking by phone with The Coast. But this time, the creative hangover was brief. “It surprised me how quickly … I started writing.”
At the time, Yorke was going through exposure therapy for PTSD stemming from the diving incident years earlier. It had been a theme of her work before—the single “The Weight” recounts the incident—but there were still threads to untangle. Yorke describes the therapy as “a lot of visualization [and] travelling in my mind’s eye, going to the accident, going to different places.”
In the midst of revisiting that incident, she started sketching out a new album. She gave it the working title Atlantis—a fitting parallel to the memories she was unpacking in therapy.
“My inspiration was to heal and move on,” she tells The Coast. “My music is never just music; it’s almost like therapy for me … I felt like this was my medicine.”
An eight-year incubation
Yorke does not rush as a musician. In a streaming era that is always hungry for a new EP, a new music video, a new single, she and Bent—who has co-produced both of Yorke’s albums—took eight years to craft and finish what would become Destroyer. That’s a byproduct of her rigorous attention to detail—the album includes a 21-piece orchestra, for one—but also the simple truth of life: It doesn’t care about the plans we make.
“There was a lot of working and reworking and reworking,” Yorke says. “We knew the songs weren’t done until they were done.”
Four years into Destroyer’s incubation, Yorke and Bent gave birth to a son. Almost simultaneously, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. Nova Scotia’s borders shut. Festivals and concerts went on indefinite hiatus. And then, two years ago in November, Yorke woke up without control of her left arm.
“It reminded me of a marionette’s arm,” she told CBC’s Atlantic Voice. “It was just swinging around freely … that was the first sign that something wasn’t right.”
A splitting headache followed. Yorke called Nova Scotia 811 and the operator told her to go to the emergency room. A CT scan at the Halifax Infirmary showed she was having a stroke.
At the time, the album was mixed but not yet mastered—“so close to the finish line,” Yorke tells The Coast.
“I knew that this was another ring of fire that I had to pass through … because the album had just felt really impossible to create,” she adds. “It was very, very heavy; very, very challenging. I had to face myself.”
Songs like “All The Flowers” and “Let Me Go” allude to that. (“I’ve been away. I’ve been asleep. I’ve been afraid. I’m not around. I’m not okay,” Yorke sings on the former.)
The stroke recovery gave Yorke’s album a new focus, along with a new name: Destroyer. The end result is layered; cinematic. Yorke’s voice haunts as much as it stirs the heart.
“The way I think of it is I paint with emotions,” she says. “The emotions are real. They’re human, and they go across time, and they go across people.”
‘If I’m in a club with Joni Mitchell, then that can’t be that bad’
Credit the “Big Yellow Taxi” singer, in part, with pushing Yorke through her recovery. The Nova Scotia multi-instrumentalist had grown up listening to Saskatoon’s Mitchell on her family’s record player. Still looks up to the legendary songwriter, too.
“She’s one of my favourite artists to sing,” Yorke says of Mitchell.
Yorke was struggling in the early days after her stroke. Her mind spiralled to thoughts of how long her recovery would take. She couldn’t use the left side of her body—a challenge made doubly difficult due to her left-handedness. And she was still in the hospital. In the midst of that, Yorke recalled a trivia tidbit about Mitchell’s life: The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had re-taught herself the guitar after surviving a brain aneurysm in 2015.
“I just was in the bathroom in my hospital room and looking in the mirror, going ‘Okay, Joni Mitchell has [lived through] something like this … And if I’m in a club with Joni Mitchell, then that can’t be that bad.”
A welcome return to the stage
When Yorke steps under the spotlight at The Stage at St. Andrew’s this coming Monday, Mar. 18, it will mark a long-awaited moment: Her first solo concert since her stroke two years ago. She’s performing as part of the Rising Tide concert series hosted by fellow singer-songwriter Leona Burkey. Indie artist Talia Schlanger is the opener. It’s a pairing Yorke is thrilled about.
“That’s gonna be such a highlight for me,” she tells The Coast. “Connecting with her, meeting her and sharing the stage.”
And while this upcoming set will look different than most of Yorke’s performances—she describes it as a “stripped-back, acoustic” set at the grand piano, as opposed to her usual full band—she’s very much looking forward to it. And nervous about it, too.
“I find it really emotional, even just thinking about it right now,” Yorke tells The Coast.
“When I had my stroke, I felt like I lost myself … so now, to come out to this [return], you know, it’s vulnerable.
“But I just feel like there’s so much energy coming from other people. And that’s what’s also pulling me forward and motivating me.”
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This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2024.