Cedric Noel announces new album inspired by his time spent living Fredericton and shares first single.
Matt Carter
I’m at a point now where I come to expect something new from Cedric Noel every few months. It seems that just when I’m starting to rotate his last release out of my current playlist, he reappears with something new. While this pattern could grow old and tiresome if delivered from just about any other artist I enjoy, Noel’s constant creative flux continues to keep me interested.
Spun and Still Beholden, is the first single off his upcoming full-length, Under A Falling Building And Out The Other Side (Front Porch Records), due February 7, 2017 and finds Noel shedding the reverb-laden approach that defined much of his earlier songwriting in favour of a cleaner ambient folk sound.
This single caps off an eclectic year for Noel that included three diverse EPs of his own, the brilliant debut EP from LAPS (one of his many collaborative projects) and his relocation from Fredericton to Montreal.
“This album totally blindsided me,” said Noel. “I’m working on a new groovy project and I took a small break from writing once I arrived in Montreal. After going to a few shows I found myself at home with the burning desire to write some folk melodies. I tried my best, but then arrived with these songs.”
As Noel is quick to admit, Under A Falling Building And Out The Other Side is his love letter to Fredericton, the city he called home for the last five years.
“This album is for Fredericton,” he said. “I feel so damn grateful to that town and it’s community. Perhaps it’s my way of attempting to say ‘thank you’. Thanks to it, I definitely feel like I’ve come out the other side though. No longer pinned. Free.”
Much of Noel’s development as an artist can be traced through his time spent in Fredericton playing with groups like Redwood Fields, Sentimentals and LAPS and through a wealth of bedroom recordings that explore pop, ambient, rock, folk and electronic influences. And it’s this diversity in his creative process that has helped keep his songwriting and compositions fresh and well-worth checking out. Each new release arrives free from predictability and often surpasses expectation.
“I really enjoyed writing lyrics for these songs,” said Noel. “All ten tracks were written within a very hazy one week period, so they ended up feeling like a very cohesive unit to me. Spun and Still Beholden has somehow become a love song and a protest song in my mind. It makes a few obscure references to global warming, old white wigs, walking out on someone but also has a few of jokes I think.”
With the exception of A Few Pieces of Repetition, a short collection of songs penned for an intended full length release that never came to fruition, Under A Falling Building And Out The Other Side marks the first collection of new songs by Noel since 2015’s All. We. Are.
Noel will be back in Fredericton in January to perform with Sentimentals as part of Shivering Songs 2017.
