A visit to an astrologer helped birth Share’s latest and
fourth release, Slumping in Your Murals, according to the band’s
songwriter, singer and guitarist, Andrew Sisk.
“It was an opening to a new understanding,” he says.
Sisk received a “proper” astrological reading, which required
details beyond day, month and year, such as the hour of birth.
Astrologers don’t predict the future, like weather forecasts, but
instead hold a mirror up for self-reflection, explains Sisk.
The stereotypically tall, dark and handsome 28-year-old, who sports
a mustache, speaks of astrology without pretension or piety. He seeks
to understand, to gain experience and knowledge, from a variety of
sources and without fear, which, he says, dictated his decisions while
growing up in a “small village” in New Brunswick.
His outlook began to change when, at 21, his first-ever flight took
him from Canada to Colomba, Sri Lanka, where he went on exchange. Many
travels have followed since then. Share went to the UK twice in the
last nine months. Before that, an extended stay in Jamaica broadly
shaped the writing on the last Share album, Pedestrian.
Of course, an astrological appointment is a different kind of
journey, but the effect is the same. After the reading, the songs for
Slumping in Your Murals, a celestial reference, came quickly to
Sisk. It started with “Broader,” an uptempo, melodic pop track. “Your
view of the world becomes a lot broader than what you’ve been seeing,”
says Sisk about the thrust of the song.
Mostly the album offers quiet and acoustic-based tunes, a kind of
night or night-sky music.
Even on a short, simple song such as “Lights Overhead” (Sisk singing
and playing acoustic guitar, multi-instrumentalist Dennis Goodwyn
playing a spacey keyboard and Zach Atkinson with brushes on a snare), a
sense of expanse develops. Nick Cobham’s lead guitar work favours mood,
melody and atmosphere over flash (see “Horse and Rider”). Cobham and
Kyle Cunjak, who plays upright bass, provide vocal harmonies.
Cunjak also plays with David Myles, Catherine MacLellan and The
Olympic Symphonium. “Without Kyle, Share would not exist,” Sisk says.
He speaks in similar tone and terms about Jenn Grant, who early on
encouraged Sisk to record his songs (he happily wrote and kept them to
himself since his teens, he says). Sisk drummed for awhile when Grant
first launched her career. She duets on “Maybe Always.”
At the upcoming Halifax release show, Share will bring up friends
and fellow artists on stage: Mike O’Neill, Laura Peek, Jon McKiel,
David Myles, Jason MacIsaac, Matt Charlton, Matt MacDonald, AA Wallace,
Gianna Lauren and Tim Crabtree.
Sisk describes people, whether those he’s known and worked with or
not, as a constellation, “points of light” connected. It’s an
open-mindedness that, he says, resides at the core of Share. Each
member pursues other projects, whether photography, booking bands or
running a label (Forward Music, which releases Share’s albums). “We’re
transient and busybodies,” Sisk says with a laugh. “This is the way
we’ve aligned.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Sisk also has an abiding interest in
astronomy. During his tours and travels he indulges in a personal love
of planetariums. “I recommend to anyone who’s never been to a
planetarium to go watch one of their documentary presentations on our
universe, our galaxy,” he says enthusiastically. “Those things are
mind-blowing. They really put you in your place.”
They make you feel small, in a good way, he says.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.