SOPHOMORE ALBUM, SHAME PRODUCED BY KEVIN DREW OUT NOVEMBER 1, 2024 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS
OMBIIGIZI, the Anishinaabe-Canadian band led by Daniel Monkman (aka Zoon) and Adam Sturgeon (aka Status/Non-Status), share the news of their sophomore album, SHAME, accompanied by the single and music video for “Laminate The Sky.”
“In my shame there is truth” OMBIIGIZI sings on the album’s opening track, laying down the atmospheric pulse of their followup to the much-lauded debut, 2022’s Polaris finalist and Juno nominated Sewn Back Together. Delving into the Anishinaabe ancestry of its core members, with OMBIIGIZI’s particularly sonic aspect – Indigenous futurism with a heavy dose of 90s Alt, Psych Rock, and Shoegaze – “Laminate The Sky” portrays “a visual representation of the world we are in,” Monkman says. With the first cheaply plasticized treaty cards (“that no stores would accept”) as poetic reference, OMBIIGIZI’s vaporous melodies, mingling with uncharacteristically stripped-back guitars and gentle rhythmic propulsion, set the band’s gripping sophomore album – SHAME – alight, with its perfect mix of terrestrial and spiritual elements.
“‘Laminate The Sky’ to us symbolizes freedom in a lot of ways,” the band says. “The idea comes from these things that Indigenous people are given at birth called a status card. Back in the day, they’d give you this crappy cardboard paper with a cheap laminated seal that everyone off the reservation thought was fake. Nowadays, we have high-tech ones that I scan at the border to go work in the United States, but even ten years ago my pass to get off the reservation would be rejected in the city. It was a rude awakening in my formative years, being self-conscious of my place.”
“Shame is a thing we all share,” the band says of the album’s title and core theme. “While the last album focused a lot on the positive force of healing despite odds, SHAME let’s things slide – it shares the things we don’t always say, it calls to others to heal and reminds them it’s OK – to feel, to be angry or sad, and that the world we experience can set the drag on high. But always it calls you in and forward.”
A song, at first, and an album that reckons deeply with identity and place. Following the recent singles “Connecting” and “Ziibi,” OMBIIGIZI now embarks on the starkly honest yet richly uplifting work entitled SHAME, out November 1 via Arts & Crafts.
Through its irrepressible storytelling and captivating sonics, again produced with Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew at The Tragically Hip’s Bathouse Studio in Kingston, Ontario – promising better tone, wider strident-to-bliss dynamics, more of what this collusion of creative souls exists to do best –OMBIIGIZI (pronounced om-BEE-ga-ZAY, meaning this is noisy) conjure a future from the remnants of the stolen past.