LIVE, LAUGH, MAJOR LOVE OUT MAY 17, 2024 VIA SLOW WEATHER
Major Love has shared another new track from their upcoming album, Live, Laugh, Major Love. In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Alberta band is sharing “One Woman” today from the new record which arrives May 17, 2024.
On the track, songwriter Colleen Brown says,
“I wanted to highlight the way women are pitted against one another, and question the idea that there are only so many spots available for women to succeed. This felt especially true for me in my twenties, but as I get older it’s more apparent that it’s just bogus. We always lose when we fight with each other instead of banding together – when we spend time comparing ourselves and being in a state of jealousy instead of celebrating one another. It chips away at our self esteem when we don’t stand up for our own worth, personally, but also collectively, with and for one another.”
The video that accompanies “One Woman” was filmed on a record-breaking -45.9 degree January day in Edmonton, with a group of very hardy Albertans at the iconic McDougall United Church.
“When director Dale Bailey and I started talking about the video for ‘One Woman’, he showed me this slow-motion clip of his niece Charlotte running, and I agreed that would be an amazing starting point for the video,” says Brown. “She is such a bright and ebullient little person, and I love how unselfconscious she is here in front of the camera. I’m told that when she saw the video she said ‘I can’t believe how cute I am in that video’ and my heart exploded a little.”
This latest offering, Live, Laugh, Major Love, began with the creation of these two demos; “The More I Know” and “Mountain Standard Time” and became the starting point for the whole record after a serendipitous meeting with Grammy Award-winning producer Marcus Paquin, who would go on to complete the album with the band.
“I met Marcus in early 2020 when the two of us were backing up Hawksley Workman and Sarah Slean on tour. I showed him a bunch of my music. He played me the new Weather Station album he had just completed and I was really blown away, obviously, so I really wanted to work together…and we hatched plans to complete the rest of [Major Love’s] album at the National Music Centre in Calgary.”
There were some worldly delays to getting started on that – during which time Brown released two solo albums – Isolation Songs in 2020 and Winging It in 2022 – the latter of which features Paquin as mixing engineer on the track “I Am Leaving (And It’s Okay)”.
The band finally convened in May 2022 to record Live, Laugh, Major Love, titled in homage to the very cheesy home decor of the rental house they stayed at while recording in Calgary, and in a nod to Brown’s self-help journey that colours a lot of the songwriting. “I’m kind of poking fun at myself while also earnestly repeating my daily affirmations… That’s the thread that ties all the songs together – it’s me wrestling with my shadows, succumbing at times, trying to pull myself back into the light.’
By the time we hear the album’s closing track “Better Excuse,” we do feel as though we are once again in the light. Brown brings us back, full circle, to her romantic optimism, but this time holding on to all the lessons gleaned from the preceding tracks, as she sings about living the life she wants without waiting for love, while also putting forth the offering: “I’ll make the time, I’ve always got space for two.”