Stream the new Rae Spoon track “Armour”

By: Staff –

Rae Spoon. (Photo: Foxx Foto)

With the release of Rae Spoon’s eighth studio album, Armour, only a month away, you can now stream the title track from one of Canada’s best songwriters below. Both the opening and title track of the album, Spoon says they “wrote it about finding strength in an identity that includes a difficult history.”

Set for release on February 19th via Coax Records, the ten new songs hold all of the lyrical depth indicative of Rae Spoon’s compositions while showcasing their distinctive voice. “I wrote Armour in three different cities at my kitchen table over a couple of years,” says Spoon. “I had a couple of really hard years after My Prairie Home came out. It left me with a lot of questions about how I was going to live with trauma after I was so open about it on screen. At the same time I fell in love and got married. The experience of choosing hope over despair really plays itself out in the lyrics.”

Armour’s self-produced enigmatic soundscapes blur the lines between organic and electronic instruments. Recorded at Calgary’s Arch Audio Studio, Rae Spoon claims, “there was a lot of experimentation with analog synths and electronic music programming along with my usual guitar and vocals. I took my tracks to long-time collaborators Alexandre Decoupigny and Lorrie Matheson and it became an album. I think the production shows a level of sophistication I have been working towards for years.”

Rae Spoon’s eighth album, is the highly anticipated follow-up to the Polaris Music Prize nominated My Prairie Home, a musical about Spoon’s fraught childhood in Alberta. As much as My Prairie Home was about Spoon’s upbringing as a queer youth in a Pentecostal household, Armour is about their view of the future. Moments of reckoning with trauma and self-preservation mingle with messages of hope and survival. Armour explores the idea that there is no instruction manual for healthy adulthood, asserting that the attempt to construct meaning is itself the point of life. Armour is a tribute to the intimate space where both hope and despair have space to share the same voice.

Tour dates across Canada supporting Armour begin February 16th and all performance stops can be found below.

Armour Track-list 
01 Armour
02 I Hear Them Calling
03 Written Across The Sky 4 Can’t Go Right
05 Wrestles With Death
06 Stolen Song
07 The Beast Is Me
08 Flood
09 Go For The Kill
10 Try Again At Everything

Pre-Order Armour via Coax Records
Pre-Order Armour via Bandcamp 

Rae Spoon Canadian Tour Dates
Feb 16 – Calgary @ The Ironwood w/ Ethan Cole
Feb 17- Edmonton @ the Mercury Room w/ Sherry-Lee Heschel
Feb 18 – Saskatoon @ La Relais w/ Ursa, respectfulchild and Homo Monstrous
Feb 19 Saskatoon @ Out Saskatoon (talk)
Feb 20 – Winnipeg @ The Good Will w/ LAL and Joanne Pollock
Feb 25 – Montreal @ Casa Del Popolo w/ Glenn Nuotio
Feb 26 – Ottawa @ Pressed Cafe w/ Glenn Nuotio
Feb 27 – Kingston @ the Artel w/ Kris and Dee
Feb 28 – Toronto @ Holy Oak w/ Party Time
Feb 29 – Toronto @ Holy Oak w/ Glenn Nuotio
Mar 3 – St John’s @ The Ship w/ Neil Conway
Mar 4 – Halifax @ The Company House w/ Lee-Ann Poole
Mar 5 – Sault Ste. Marie at Gore Street Cafe
Mar 11 – Galiano Island @ TBA
Mar 13 – Vancouver @ Skinny Fat Jacks
Mar 17 – Victoria @ Victoria Event Center w/Corwin Fox