Echoes, the fourth album from The Jerry Cans, is available today. So too is a new video for the single Swell (My Brother), which was shot in Iqaluit.
Lead singer and guitarist Andrew Morrison said Swell (My Brother) was influenced by the loss of two childhood friends to suicide while the album was in production.
image courtesy of Aakuluk Music/YouTube
“Losing family and friends this way is not new for the band, or anyone who has spent any time in Nunavut. This song came out of the anger, sorrow, and frustration of this experience. Swell (My Brother) expresses a deep frustration with ongoing inaction by the powers that need to appropriately address these issues, and never really seeing any movement,” Morrison said. “But in the end, Swell (My Brother) is a song to honour our friends, our family members, and our community members — a song between friends who grew up and laughed, loved and cried, fought occasionally, and created life-long memories with each other.”
Drummer Stephen Rigby directed the video.
“A very common response I get from people down south when I say I’m from Nunavut is, ‘I could never live there,’ and I think that’s just because of how ignorant they are to how beautiful life here actually is,” Rigby said. “I basically filmed the places where I spend all of my spare time at home and wanted to show how peaceful it is. I figured I would be filming everyone individually, I felt it gave the video a sense of being and feeling alone. When we all feel alone at the same time, you can realize that you actually aren’t, because we’re all alone together.”
Echoes, created under Aakuluk Music, offers 13 songs. The title track features James Ungalaq of Nunavut’s metal legends Northern Haze.