Canadian multi-instrumentalist Melina Coolen releases Street Pigeon, a deeply personal album exploring grief, resilience, and self-discovery.
Canadian songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, audio engineer, and sound designer Melina Coolen has unveiled her new album, Street Pigeon, a deeply personal exploration of grief, loneliness, societal uncertainty, resilience, and finding your own way.
Blending retro-pop/rock, country, and electronic textures, Street Pigeon brings together songs written over the past decade while showcasing a more poetic and contemplative side of Coolen’s songwriting. The album also marks a creative milestone, as she incorporates sound design as an instrument and performs every instrumental part herself.
Previously featured on Canadian Beats: Get to know the artist behind the music in our 2023 Five Questions With Melina Coolen interview.
Melina Coolen Street Pigeon Album Explores Grief and Resilience
Inspired by the weathered street pigeons Coolen encountered while living in Toronto, Street Pigeon draws parallels between the birds’ resilience and the emotional challenges people face when life takes an unexpected turn.
“You don’t have to be homeless to feel homeless on the inside – to feel loss whether it’s grieving loved ones, relationships, careers,” Coolen explains. “When your life takes a different path than expected and you don’t know where you’re going but you always smile and keep trying to do the right thing…”
Through its exploration of uncertainty, loss, and perseverance, the album offers a reflection on what it means to keep moving forward, even when the path ahead feels unclear.
Melina Coolen Shares an Empowering Message With “I Will Be Me”
One of the album’s standout tracks, “I Will Be Me” (feat. Chris Cron), delivers a hopeful reminder of self-worth and the importance of finding happiness within.
Originally composed for a documentary, the song’s melody was ultimately cut from the project and returned to Coolen. Although she attempted to write lyrics for it several times, the words didn’t come together until she revisited the piece during a particularly difficult and lonely period.
“I think it ended up being an empowering and relatable song,” she says. “It’s funny how sometimes your art also just needs to wait for the right time.”
The song challenges the pressures society places on success, appearance, and popularity, reminding listeners that their worth isn’t determined by outside expectations.
“Society makes it seem like you have to be the smartest, most beautiful, richest, most popular person to have purpose in life. And while those goals can be nice, it doesn’t dictate our value. Us being alive today adds value and makes the world a better place.”
At the heart of the song is the simple but powerful affirmation “I Am.”
“If bad or unfair things have happened to you or you’re worried or overwhelmed about something, saying ‘I Am’ can be really grounding and reassuring in knowing all those things haven’t conquered you,” Coolen explains. “For in this very moment, you are.”
Melina Coolen Collaborates With Chris Cron on “I Will Be Me”
The track also features Chris Cron, whose vocals add another dimension to Coolen’s uplifting message.
After discovering Cron through videos shared by a friend on social media, Coolen was immediately drawn to his voice, particularly as a longtime fan of The Beach Boys.
She initially invited him to contribute to another album track, “Will Be Alright,” before sending him “I Will Be Me.” His improvised vocal harmonies ultimately became an important part of the finished arrangement.
Five Questions With Melina Coolen
First off, congratulations on the release of Street Pigeon! For those who may be discovering your music for the first time, can you tell us a little about yourself and how your musical journey began?
Thank you! I am a retropop songwriter, producer and engineer. I’ve been naturally musically and artistically inclined since a young age. Music was always like breathing to me: My main means of expressing myself. I started picking up instruments and playing what I heard by ear at the age of three. That is also when I started piano lessons. Never missing a year, I continued lessons straight into university where I majored in music composition and then studied audio production during my masters.
Being a poetic aestheticist, I loved songwriting and was also fascinated with creating the big sound of the old easy listening orchestras and choirs of the 60’s. Growing up, I was a huge fan of both Ray Conniff and The Monkees, and they indirectly exposed me to the Brill Building greats – it was an interesting common denominator between musical groups you may think have nothing in common.
The title Street Pigeon comes from the pigeons you encountered while living in Toronto and the resilience you saw in them. What was it about these birds that resonated with you, and when did you realize they represented something much deeper?
The street pigeons are just always in your face in Toronto, something I wasn’t used to growing up in rural Nova Scotia. To me, they seemed so weathered and beaten down, and after many lonely years of feeling unseen and being an academic workaholic, I was feeling beaten down as well and just felt this resonance – seen in a way the faceless crowds hurrying to their destinations could not offer.
I’m also the type of person to “do the work” as they say. To look inwards and seek enlightenment, musing philosophically and spiritually often. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne, which has lyrically become one of my favourite songs, so succinctly captures the spiritual depth in the idea of trials happening to free us with one single line: “all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them.” I only mention that here because this one line is the best description of the concept that is the backbone of what Street Pigeon is all about. And of course, not saying trials are desirable, but rather bridges.
Some of the songs on this album were written over a decade ago. What was it like revisiting material from different chapters of your life, and did your perspective on any of those songs change over time?
I think I was always mature for my age as a child. Even when I was young, I was quite the aestheticist, writing songs and poems about preserving the environment and humanity against greed and all. I do still resonate with my lyrics – more than ever as we fight to preserve knowledge and the environment while the world faces a loneliness epidemic on top of it all. The sad part is to what degree these lyrics are even more relevant today. For example, Before Your Time was originally written in regards to the boom in smart phones and the resulting negative shifts in society. And now it’s just so much worse!
4. One of the most impressive things about Street Pigeon is that you played every instrument yourself and incorporated sound design as an instrument for the first time. What inspired you to take that approach, and what were some of the biggest challenges or surprises along the way?
Being a multi-instrumentalist, I love playing everything and have always had a broad interest in creating the whole sound, rather than fixating on just one part. Also, to clarify, I did not use clips or loops, but I did play every single instrument manually with a MIDI controller. Usually the main deterrent for me is not being a drummer, bassist or guitarist, but I’ve been working on my MIDI drumming, bass and guitar strumming chops using just the keys in a percussive way and I’m feeling proud of how far I’ve come. It’s just something I like to keep building upon, and creating every part is the main way I play music now. It’s very enjoyable.
But it also gives me independence in the studio: I don’t think that’s something that is widely realized, but hiring most session musicians – even vocalists – is like playing a person like an instrument in the sense that you are teaching them how to sing the words, when to take breaths or what kind of drum fills you want and when. On the rare occasion, I have people, like Chris Cron for example, who don’t need coaching and can capture the style immediately. But this is kind of rare. You really have to have strong musical communication skills to play through another person while also fostering their creativity. It can be a long process and sometimes time and money can be wasted if it’s not a good fit. Whereas, creating your own vision yourself is just so liberating and fun!
When mixing my song Before Your Time, there were just some sonic spaces that needed to be filled, but I felt I already added the instruments that needed to be in there without overdoing any frequency group. Being an audio post-production engineer, I’ve been freelancing in film and game sound design over the past years, so then it just sort of hit me: What if I just added sounds to compliment the lyrics just like I would add sfx to a film? The concept wasn’t strange to me, as I had musical heroes such as Brian Wilson and Paul Lansky to normalize the use of sounds in a musical capacity. Besides sneaking in different instruments or sounds to build my backing soundscape wall, I never really thought about using sfx prominently in one of my songs before, marrying experimental with traditional. I don’t think every song calls for it, but it worked well in Before Your Time and the bridge in 40 Years.
Your single “I Will Be Me” carries such an important message about self-worth and finding happiness within yourself. You mentioned that the melody had been sitting with you for years before the lyrics finally came together. What changed when you revisited it, and why do you think that particular moment was the right time for the song to find its voice?
As we all go on our own emotional healing journeys, we grow and we’re not the same person we were before. I don’t think I could’ve written the lyrics exactly so back when I composed the melody, just being in a different place in my own healing journey. Being a student for most of my life and then working as an underpaid audio post engineer (t’is the industry norm haha) all while living alone, there was this pressing fear about what would happen when I didn’t have any savings left to drain. And over the past couple years, seeing the increasing number of homeless people made me reflect on how I would feel if that was me. And it was that musing that inspired the lyrics for this song, actually. Growing up with a lot of unspoken pressure to always be the best and successful, I had realized how entwined with my identity it had become. Divorcing the idea of societal success from value really inspired this song and the desire to share the empowerment behind this realization.
You teamed up with Chris Cron on “I Will Be Me” and “Will Be Alright.” How did that collaboration come together, and what did his vocals bring to the songs that you hadn’t originally envisioned?
At first, I was intending to have my vocal arrangement for Will Be Alright released as an acapella barbershop quartet track. But I didn’t know anyone who sang in that style! Then a friend sent me Chris Cron’s videos on socials because I love The Beach Boys, and something clicked: Wouldn’t it be nice (haha) if Chris Cron did feature vocal work? Well, it turns out he does! So I sent Chris my vocal arrangement and when I heard his vocals I was just about ready to burst with joy.
It also hit me: What if I sent him I Will Be Me? For not only was I having a hard time previously trying to write lyrics for this song, but it was hard just trying to find a featured vocalist, as feature work is not a big industry (yet, hopefully) in Nova Scotia. I also originally envisioned it in a gospel soul style, so this song has had quite the journey! I love how songs have a way of taking you to where they need to be! So I started to revision the song, and when Chris Cron did his best Brian Wilson, (as he put it, haha) and did some wonderful harmonies, it just really worked.
Now that Street Pigeon is out in the world, what’s next for you? Are there plans for live performances, new collaborations, or more music on the horizon?
Oh I have at least three albums in the works. My main musical goal is to bring to life all the songs plus choir and jazz arrangements I wrote growing up, so I have quite a bit of material that I am eager to share! I also hope to keep expanding my circle of collaboration.
