If there’s one artist you need to listen to before this year’s end, it’s Marc McLaughlin.
Fredericton-based and Newfoundland-born, this former Halifax resident is hot off the release of his latest single—the title track of his soon-to-be-released EP—”All I Can Say”, accompanied by a new music video.
This single, coupled with his first EP, 2023’s I Don’t Want To Be Blue Anymore, make up the extent of McLaughlin’s discography as a solo artist. It’s a small catalogue, but it’s one well worth checking out for fans of boundary-pushing indie rock.
His first EP was guitar-focused with accompanying keys, creating soft psych riffs over interchanging rhythms and a smooth, airy depth in his voice, similar to that of Will Toledo from Car Seat Headrest.
His new single, and the upcoming All I Can Say EP, keeps the rhythms, vocals and reverberating guitar licks, but pushes the emotions forward with a frontward focus on keys. Piano is all listeners will hear for the first few bars of his new single, until the drum machine kicks in and McLaughlin’s signature voice and riffs take centre-stage. However, the piano always lingers in the mix. And it’s not just set-dressing. The instrument has become crucial to his sound, whether McLaughlin knew it or not.
McLaughlin spoke with The Coast about how “All I Can Say” fell out of him after he moved to Fredericton in 2021, and his pivot towards piano despite being a guitarist at heart.
“I just moved to New Brunswick. I don’t know if I was here a couple days. I remember just being at the piano and kind of banged it out. The better ones kind of just happen, I find, and this was one of those. Wasn’t a whole lot of digging around for a song. I guess, like, it just kind of falls out of you, which would be great if it happened more often.
“Everything I have out already is really guitar-based,” he says. “I did this one on the piano, and the new songs… I showed a friend the other day, and he’s like, ‘Oh, there is guitar on the EP, but it’s very keyboard, piano-based, which is cool.’ It’s a different thing for me.”
On the new track, the piano is a basis for the melody while McLaughlin’s guitar work is centralized to soft reverberating riffs. The keys are a canvas, and the guitar is the paint. This also leads to a different kind of progression than McLaughlin’s other tracks, swelling midway through to an emotional bridge before heading back down for the chorus.
But more than just changing his sound, the piano helps solidify the themes of the song—some of which bleed through on the rest of the EP, which is broadly about McLaughlin’s young adult life, his rural upbringing and living away from home. While there is no exact story being told on “All I Can Say,” McLaughlin says the song is about miscommunication, misunderstandings, distance and longing, with the piano reinforcing those themes through a melancholic sound.
The song itself is purposefully vague—perhaps due in part to its sudden inception—making any sort of music video for the single a challenge. Thankfully, Nova Scotian filmmaker Gwyneth Christoffel took the theme of miscommunication and placed it into context.
“I guess she kind of took the idea of being misunderstood and the lack of communication, like, well, ‘Let’s put you on a comedy stage and have you bomb, but then kind of recover from it,’” explains McLaughlin.
The video features McLaughlin on stage, being his affable self to an audience who aren’t receptive to his humour. As he stumbles over himself during the song’s midway climax, he manages to find his words again, reclaiming his footing and connecting with the audience.
Shot in a small studio in Toronto with an equally small but effective crew, but made with more money than McLaughlin is used to, he feels thankful to have had the opportunity to record a video and be able to pay some of his friends to take part in the project.
“I come from a very DIY, like, no money kind of background,” says McLaughlin. “This is the first time I had access to something, things like that. Still not super high-budget or anything, but for me, definitely a step up.”
The song itself was recorded between McLaughlin’s home studio and Fang Recording in Dartmouth with Thomas Stacjer’s sound engineering. While he was used to recording out of his basement, getting to use a Rhodes piano for the EP, along with several other vintage-style keys, left an impression on McLaughlin.
“You go in, you see all these keyboards around you. That’s hard. I gotta use that, I gotta play that.”
With his EP All I Can Say expected out on Feb 18, 2025, McLaughlin is planning to tour Eastern Canada, with stops throughout Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, including Halifax on March 22 when he’ll play at Gus’ Pub on Agricola Street.
This article appears in Dec 1-18, 2024.
