Braden Lam is exactly where he wants to be.
The indie-folk musician who has called Dartmouth home for nearly a decade is nearly two weeks in from releasing his first full-length album, The Cloudmaker’s Cry. It’s a place he never could have imagined himself when he finished university and couldn’t find work at the height of the pandemic.
Yet, three EPs and plenty of on-stage experience later, Lam has made music his full-time career, and it all shows on his newest record: a testament to everything he’s felt over his time in Nova Scotia, and a goal he’s happy to have achieved.
“I’ve always had my debut record held highly as a core vision of where I wanted to be, or where I wanted to go, I guess,” Lam says in an interview with The Coast. “I was waiting for the right time, and the right people, and the right moment.”
Lam’s album is a monument to all the lessons he’s learned in his career so far—not only in how to write and perform, but how to manage his time and budget, find people who think along his lines, and have the courage to tell stories that matter most to him.
Just this Wednesday, he released the music video for the first track on the album, “The Hold”. A piano intro sets the scene as Lam sits seemingly alone in the Halifax Forum’s bingo hall. Drink in hand, stamping numbers, he is the picture of loneliness. That is until the song picks up with an intoxicating guitar line and dancers lead Lam to sing, and eventually, score his bingo.
“It’s very neutral and sombre and kind of stale at the beginning,” says Lam, “and then you slowly see my character become more and more animated as they sort of feel this freedom of being in love with someone.”
The video, produced by filmmaker Tim Mombourquette and edited by Lam’s longtime music video director Griffin O’Toole, depicts the song’s message of longing for a loved one from afar.
“You’re just thinking of them. You’re missing them. But there’s also some joy in being their person and knowing that when they get home, they’re going straight to you.”
While his new music video helps paint a picture, it’s Lam’s lyricism that truly gets to the heart of the matter, characterizing his love-induced freedom as a hold being had on him.
If listeners can garner anything from Lam’s record, it’s that love brings on plenty of complicated emotions. The track “Hurricane Season” may be an obvious reference to Nova Scotia’s increasing risk of destructive storms—most notably, Hurricane Fiona—but it’s about more than just a weather system: it’s fiddle-fueled melodies are accompanied by an anxiety for surviving the storm and worry for those that are too far away to hold.
“I was actually away in Germany on tour, and Hurricane Fiona had just hit back at home,” describes Lam. “I was sort of outside the bubble and got this interesting perspective from the outside, only really seeing all the buzz on social media and seeing pictures of chip and toilet paper aisles cleared out at the grocery store, and having the feeling of, you know, obviously a lot of anxiety and being scared. The internet went dark for six hours… I was very worried for friends and loved ones.”
Each song is a different type of cry to Lam: some are cries of grief and sorrow, others of joy and contentment. Some are of worry. Others are of protest and anxiety.
“I think ‘Hurricane Season’ touches a lot of it,” he says on the theme of cries. “This song was an opportunity to touch on the climate crisis and how I’m experiencing it at home.”
Throughout the album’s 10 tracks, Lam is taking every lesson he’s learned from his last decade of musicianship to craft something soul-bearing, entertaining, and above all, East Coast. It helps that his producer, Eli Browning, knew how to make Lam’s experience shine through. It was all recorded in Browning’s studio, an old church in Toronto’s West End.
“Eli had access to the whole sanctuary, and all of it’s beautiful,” says Lam. “Acoustic wood-treated sounding room, but then the whole top floor was his control room and studio. So, we had these chambered vocal rooms where we could record tighter drums if we wanted, guitar, vocals. But then we also had the ability to throw the drums in the sanctuary, or throw some background vocalists outside and get these roomy sounding elements to add to the recording.”
Luckily enough, the first stop on Lam’s upcoming cross-country tour is the Sanctuary Arts Centre in Dartmouth, not too dissimilar from where he recorded the tracks for his album. He’ll be holding his album release party at the venue starting at 8pm on Friday, April 25, accompanied by his band, as well as guests Fiona Clancey and The McMillan’s Camp Boys.
While his tour takes him across New Brunswick, Maine and Ontario over the next month or so, Lam will have much more in store for all of his fans in the form of four more music videos—one for every song on the album.
For tickets to his upcoming tour, check out Lam’s website.
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2025.
