By Will McGuirk

Rory Taillon is a big lad with a big voice. Anyone who has seen the Port Perry raised Ottawa based singer songwriter perform will attest to his presence live. He can fill up the outside all by himself but on his new album, “ Drifting’, he is introspective. He is going inside himself and the album asks many questions. The title is apt.

With the world on pause we are all kinda drifting now. There is no force propelling us, no one steering. We are carried along on the streams of social media. ‘Drifting’ is an exploration of Rory’s time at his time and it is also now of ours in this time.

Rory started this journey before the pandemic hit the world. This virus has been an enormous financial hit on musicians as venues close, tours are cancelled and the production of physical product delayed. The virality of the internet allowed music to spread quickly and freely. Freely been the apt word, musicians had been doubling-down on live performances and physical releases to generate some income. Now the virality of Covid-19 has removed those options for quite some time. So we drift. This maybe the worst time for a new release but perhaps the best time for ‘Drifting’ because it speaks to the time.

As a new and independent Taillon has a difficult time on at least two fronts; fitting into the smallness of a rock song and worming his show into the back corners of tea houses and breweries, the only venues available to new acts. Rory is operatic and needs a stage as larger than life as his voice is, to properly carry his art.

On this new record RT has decided to strip away all the clutter in the small and take what little room was available and give it over to his voice. Instrumentation is sparse and the songs are recorded to sit right inside your ear. They are close enough to enter the infinite space of your own head and its in there they find room to stretch and unwind, to swell and loosen. His croon enters your cocoon and he asks questions maybe others are asking as the drifting lulls us; the Whys of this time; in the case of Rory, the whys of touring, of writing, recording, the value of song, of life as an artist. And yet the value lies in his voice quietening those other voices, squeezing them out. Contemplating his doubt overcomes our doubt. In his voice we hear possibility, in his doubt we hear hope.

There seems to be something prog-rock-ish afoot in Durham Region musicians. It may be in part to the success of the operatics of heavy metal heroes Protest The Hero it maybe just the times, it maybe just me. But acts such as Deep Dark River, Mappe Of, Lindsay Schoolcraft, Punchu, and Chastity are pushing against the boundaries of the pop song, going higher, lower, wider, louder and in the case of Mappe Of filling an entire album with his own imaginary world. Perhaps its the boundlessness of the online, the restriction-less world of their spent youth. Whatever it is music in the Region is getting bigger, grander, going global. And JT on new album is wandering that same landscape and singing his not so little heart out.

Slowcity.ca sent Rory some questions, answers below.

Slowcity.ca: Drifting - its an interesting title, it can be good, bad, which way are you drifting?

Rory Taillon: ” I’m not really sure which way I’m drifting. I really liked Drifting as a title because it illustrated a lot of the themes of the album, as well as the flow of the feel throughout the album. It gave an image of a lot of the ideas and themes seeming like a sort of fog that one is drifting through as they listen to the record. I also like it as a sort of state of mind as a viewer of the issues I’ve written about, observing them through the music at a safe distance as they drift past them through the album.

SC: There seems to be a questioning element to much of it, what was the impetus behind the album?

RT: There were a few things. A lot of the album is putting down my ideas and struggles with mental health as a sort of cathartic practice. I find I can put things into better words through writing songs than I can sometimes in conversations. There’s a lot of remorse about how I handled my issues in the past and anger in this album as well. I also was trying to work through my grasp and fascination of the concept of death as someone who grew up with a religious definition being presented as the answer for the early part of my life.

SC: How do you think you have evolved musically on this album, and if you agree you have where were you hoping to go?

RT: I definitely think there has been an evolution on this album. Only Whispers and Drifting have stepped away from trying to write music that fit a certain genre or style and attempting to write music that wasn’t being shoved into a genre box. I wanted to write songs that came together as they were instead of trying to chase someone else’s success with a sound. I also wanted to rely less on the bigness of my voice with this album and challenge myself with vocal techniques that I’m not as comfortable with and spend more time on the songs.