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Over the past 25 years, Toronto singer-songwriter Julian Taylor has gradually built an ever-growing reputation for quality roots-based music and amassing a catalogue of critically acclaimed albums. Pathways is his third solo-credited studio release (there are also two as the Julian Taylor Band and three as part of Staggered Crossing) and one that finds him in a particularly reflective mood as he considers his approach to the burdens that accrue and the pain that causes to self and others.
Co-produced with Colin Linden and recorded at Jukasa Studios at the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario and Linden’s own in Nashville, it opens with the stripped-down acoustic guitar and keening steel of the slow drifting Weighing Down, a song about looking to lighten the self-imposed load (“You’ve been so hard on yourself/It’s time to let things soften now”) as he notes “The way that we choose to look at things is an attitude/Looking at the skyline tonight I choose gratitude”.
A similarly subdued feel informs the folksy front porch sway-along Love Letters, a co-write with Tyler Ellis about taking the chance, that, namechecking ’Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf and Cash and Carter, is succinctly summed up in the line “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.
There’s a funkier edge to the swampy, bluesy Sixth Line Road with its echoing electric guitar, the title referring to a location in Oakville, Ottawa, and the lyrics (“One of the greatest, was cut down at the knees/They said it wasn’t on purpose, it was done deliberately”) about Black people’s struggle with everyday racism and discrimination, inspired by the NHL’s refusal to allow Jamaican-Canadian hockey player Herb Carnegie to play in the league back in the 1930s and carrying the message “When you are a hero, you don’t stay in your own backyard/You take up your arms and try to change the guard…If you want it and deserve it, you shouldn’t have to beg and plead”.
With Allison Russell on harmonies and written with Robert Priest and Rosanne Baker Thornley, the semi-spoken, slow-walking, organ-tinted, soulful title track charts a journey through life (“From the first thing we see/To the last thing we need/It’s the life in-between that matters”), Taylor describing it as “a letter from a person who’s gone through many experiences, and who’s trying to be there for someone younger. Trying to protect them and guide them through the hard points in life” in the search for meaning and connection in our fleeting lives, offering the simple mantra “Be gentle, be kind/Be grateful, take time”.
Running Away rocks the tempo up to a bluesy boogie that again reflects on asking, “How am I supposed to handle all these scars etched in time?” when “Heaven seems to know that It’s only me to blame”, wondering “Am I getting over it or am I just running away” and pleading “I’m not asking you to love me but forgive me for this pain”.
In The Air Tonight, See This Thing Through speaks of chasing success in LA and finding it ever elusive (“I always wanted the bright lights/And to be on the big scene/Seems like I’ve been out here forever/Chasing that dream”) in a city “Where no one cares who you are” but resolving “I ain’t breaking I’ll keep on pushing/I’m gonna see this thing through”.
Dancing around a fingerpicked pattern, bluesy electric guitar licks and itchy rhythm, Ain’t Life Strange is pretty much summed up in the title as we flounder our way through life’s constant struggles and who we’re meant to be when we don’t “even know what we’re doing to ourselves and how our actions affect everyone else” and wishing time would just stand still so you can get your bearings, reminding “be careful of what you wish for could get left behind” because “there’s a fine line between a broken and beautiful mind.”
It ends far too soon with the simple acoustic strum, weeping steel and resonator guitar of Into The Waves, a slightly Paul Simon-esque song of wearied resignation (“You searched an empty street to find a light/But you left your cigarettes at home that night…I guess you wish you were someone else so you don’t have to play these games/You get your hair in knots, time and time and time again”) and the letting-go (“Some things are too hard to handle/Somebody’s going to break your heart”), but, while the title refrain “You walked into the waves” might suggest suicide, it’s meaning is far more metaphorical, bearing in mind water as a symbol of cleansing and rebirth, chiming with his description of the album as about “righteousness, acceptance, and enlightenment”.
2020’s The Ridge earned Julian Taylor a Juno award as Solo Artist of the Year, and 2022’s Beyond The Reservoir gained him a second nomination and three for this year’s Canadian Folk Music Awards; now, with Pathways, Julian Taylor ranks alongside fellow Canadian folk music luminaries Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joni Mitchell. If this is about letting go of burdens, long may he lay down his weary tune.
Pathways (27th September 2024) Howlin’ Turtle Inc
