Winnipeg Rockers Empaths in Retrograde Unveil Debut Album The Great and Infectious Single “She Comes to the City”
Life as an artist can be desolate and dire, but it can also come with ample moments of joy and happiness in simple things and making connections. Those thoughts about the highs and lows and rolling with the punches are perfectly captured in Winnipeg indie rock group Empaths In Retrograde‘s debut album The Great. It’s an honest collection of genre-defying material speaking to vices and virtues using infectious, intriguing melodies and hooks and incredibly accurate but gritty lyrical vignettes highlighted by the single “She Comes to the City.”
“‘She Comes to the City” is about the sacrifices one must make for the things we love,” the band says of the single, which brings to mind some eclectic collage of The Strokes and critically acclaimed Canadian group Constantines. “Written about a tumultuous long-distance relationship from January 2024, it was saved by guitarist Ryan Whiskey’s (Ryan Purdy’s) insistence on its survival. His buzzy guitars compliment the catchy singalong hook of the chorus to create our best attempt at a song of the summer (as no one likes driving in a Winnipeg winter).”
Empaths in Retrograde consists of singer and acoustic guitarist Chris Kilrea, singer and electric guitarist Ryan Purdy, singer and bassist Andrew Kehler, and drummer Curtis Ullman. The quartet is fantastic on “She Comes to the City,” which also featured some help from fellow Manitoba musician Kola Kola Pop. The energy and verve exemplify The Great from start to finish, an album that didn’t take the group long to start once they formed. “Recorded in our basement over the course of our first eight months as a band, The Great is a tale of the artist’s journey in 10 divinely connected tracks,” they write.
As solid as “She Comes to the City” is, The Great contains several other gems, including the opening “Drugs Are Fun,” resembling a spacey, trippy, free-form jazz-tinged gem that gets the ball rolling. Composed “over a bonfire” during the summer of 2024, the tune could be compared to Frank Zappa putting his stamp on the Queens of the Stone Age nugget “Feel Good Hit of the Summer.” Meanwhile, the funky “Don’t F-ck With The System” is a swampy tune the band recorded “fast and dirty” with dynamic results, thanks to guest horn players Jordie Ouellet and Benny Mountain.
Fans of B.A. Johnston, The Hold Steady (or The Hold Steady lead singer Craig Finn’s solo work) would lap up Empaths in Retrograde’s music. The pandemic-inspired “Alright, Alt-Right” oozes power-pop flavor while lyrically revisiting a time where “it seemed that everyone lost the plot” regarding objective reality. The southern-laced “Meltdown” concerns Kilrea’s mental health issues in 2015 and searching for enlightenment.
“This is definitely one of my more expansive songs and a personal favorite,” Kilrea says.
Other highlights include “The Great (I Chased A Dream)” with its ramshackle Replacements-esque approach. Here, Empaths in Retrograde sing of dreams buskers possess. Those lofty ambitions often end up relegated to discovering hard truths. “This song captures the ego, but with the ability to stare failure in the face and say at least I tried,” Kilrea says. Elsewhere, the jangled effort “Reality” reveals some orgiastic activities following an open mic night. “It was a dream, and when I finally had it in my grasp, it was nothing like I imagined it to be,” Kilrea says of the song’s night in question. “That is how most dreams are.”
Empaths in Retrograde formed following Kilrea’s two-decade quest to achieve success in the music industry. After meeting Purdy, Ullman, and Kehler, the group discovered how they could create art mirroring “the hopelessness, boredom, and disappointment inherent in the human condition.” The group has performed at various Winnipeg venues, including The Park Alleys, The Sidestage, The Royal Albert Arms, and The Osborne Taphouse. In 202,4 the group released a Yuletide single, “Holiday Hullaballoo.” Empaths in Retrograde describe their style as “roots/punk/soul psychedelic,a” and it’s hard to argue with that.
Empaths in Retrograde plan to celebrate the release of their debut album The Great with a launch concert on Feb. 28 at The Osborne Taphouse in Winnipeg. It’s an album that’s great thanks to excellent musicianship, finely-crafted lyrics, and tracks like “She Comes to the City,” which would melt the coldest of hearts in Winterpeg, er, Winnipeg and beyond.
Hi gang! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers?
We are Empaths in Retrograde, we are one of Winnipeg’s most independent 4 piece rock bands.
“She Comes to the City” is about the sacrifices we make for the things we love. Can you talk about the inspiration behind the song and how your own experiences shaped it?
Chris – This was sort of a straightforward song. I had a girlfriend who lives out of town, and she would regularly drive in from the country to come visit and do the thing. I had some issues with dealing with the distance as well, and I suppose it was also a plea to myself for gratitude. Life’s a constant battle between celebration and lamentations, but for a while, I was special enough in someone’s eyes that they would come into the city for me. That was pretty nice.
Your sound has been compared to The Strokes and Constantines, yet you describe it as ‘roots/punk/soul psychedelica.’ How did you arrive at this unique blend of styles?
Chris – Well, I’m a bit of a subpar musician, writing most of these songs on an acoustic guitar, so at that point, everything is doomed to sound like a roots-y folk song. In the middle of the recording process I realized that I hate the acoustic guitar (at least the way I play it) so my personal mission became to remove it from our sound and allow more space to draw from everyone else’s influences and really ride Ryan’s classic blues/70’s NYC punk sensibilities and Andrew’s jazz/r&b leanings.
Andrew – I’ve always felt like having a specific genre can be a limiting factor. Between all four of us I think we all have such a different starting base when it comes to the music we like to write, play, listen to, get inspired by, that our blend of different minded people that intentionally work together can really help create new sound that remains “familiar”.
You recorded The Great in your basement over the course of your first eight months as a band. How did that DIY approach shape the album’s sound and energy?
Andrew – I think the basement atmosphere (as much as I demanded a work horse energy) helped create a more relaxed environment to create in. Not to mention, it means our sound is 100% Empaths In Retrograde from the songwriting stage to tracking, mixing, and mastering, right to final release. Although this approach takes longer in regard to recording due to learning the songs at the same time, we didn’t have the financial pressures that come with professional recordings in a studio. Plus, I personally love the process of “photographing” music. An audio recording is just a photograph of a moment In time. This album is my version of Polaroids that I want to stick to the refrigerator.
Chris – It definitely captured a lot of the varying relational dynamics that were occurring as things weren’t happening as fast as some of us were expecting or things weren’t turning out as well as some of us were hoping. There was a lot of uncertainty during the process, as we were losing members pretty much every show and trying to figure out how we were going to carry on. It was a very tumultuous time, and it forced us to work in different ways to try and figure it all out and I think that all sort of came through in all the different genres we ended up touching on and the different sounds that came along with it as different people stepped up and pushed us through the darkness
If you could pick one song from The Great that best represents what Empaths in Retrograde is all about, which one would it be and why?
“Chased a Dream” was pretty much us working at the height of our powers. Ryan locked in a nice little guitar riff and created a no-holds-barred, unapologetic rock track about the frustrations of trying to do the thing and staring in the face of failure time and time again. Philosophically, it’s everything we are talking about. It is the most autobiographical song we have on what is already an incredibly autobiographical record, and it probably has our best hooks
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