Park Sound Presents: Bre McDaniel, Jess Vaira and Ian Badger at Park Sound Studio, 1468 Columbia St., North Vancouver. Saturday, Nov. 24, 7 p.m. Tickets $8 (brownpapertickets.com/event/3821572).
A rule that most British Columbians seem to abide by: going out into the wilderness offers astonishing potential for restoration.
Anyone versed in the daily work grind – you know, the one that’s always followed by endless stints stuck in traffic, ample pollution of both the fossil fuel and noise varieties, and the constant din of city lights – yearns for those moments of quiet and tranquility provided by nature’s green embrace.
On Howl, the first full-length album from Vancouver artist Bre McDaniel, the musician has explored the tonic of wildness and the wondrousness of wilderness across 14 spacious tracks.
“It’s a call to listen and notice all these interesting sounds that are around us that, if we don’t pay attention to them, they’re just noise and nothing,” McDaniel tells the North Shore News, adding that if one stops to hear the birds – really listen to them – they might instead encounter “little messages for us throughout the day” instead of mere white noise.
Born in North Vancouver to a musical family, McDaniel first got behind the microphone while studying visual arts at Emily Carr University. “I would procrastinate from working on art projects by then writing music and singing, and discovering how much I love it,” she says.
Following a string of EPs released in 2013 and 2016, respectively, Howl has emerged following the passing of a beloved relative in one moment and the creation of something new in the next, notes McDaniel.
The album is dedicated to McDaniel’s grandmother, Olga Chaba, who passed away last December and whose support has played a big role in her artistic life. After she passed, McDaniel’s grandmother left a small token earmarked for her musical career, which has helped pave the way for her to finally record a full length album.
“She would have wanted me to use the money this way. It was a big push to see what was possible,” says McDaniel.
The release of Howl also marks the first release put out by Orphan Girl Records, a record label and artist co-op that McDaniel co-founded with other likeminded collaborators.
“It’s all about reciprocity,” she says about the goal of the label. “It’s about celebrating from my own community. Who’s out there? What’s going on? How can I hire people really thoughtfully?”
While Howl boasts an all-female lineup of contributors, nature itself presents itself as perhaps McDaniel’s greatest muse.
The musician tightened her studio recording chops in the lead up to Howl’s recording, but in an effort to make the album sound “a lot more grounded” she also developed a fascination with field recording, or recording audio outside instead of in the confines of a studio. Thematically, says McDaniel, the album explores wildness and the undomesticated voice, so “it only seemed natural then to see what we could capture in the wild. … It’s very of-this-place.”
The sound of a campfire crackling, birds audibly chirping, or roaring water as it falls and crashes can be heard littered throughout the album’s songs and interludes.
“Sometimes it’s not very recognizable, but other times it is,” says McDaniel. “We went out to Lynn Canyon there on the North Shore. There’s a little interlude that’s called ‘Twin Falls Bridge’ and that’s me singing … as loud as I can in front of the waterfall.”
On the song “Oriole,” which is about songbirds being hunted, McDaniel field recorded flocks of birds as theirs squawking and chirping loudly rang out, and on the album’s title track the singer acknowledges her acute awareness of the natural music all around us.
“The ‘Howl’ song is a call to just acknowledge how much nature revives us, by being out in the woods, and what a privilege we have to live in a place like B.C. and how it’s very restoring,” she says.
McDaniel’s debut channels a mix of folk-pop and lo-fi natural soundscapes, but during her upcoming show at Park Sound Studio in North Vancouver she won’t be backed by a full band, she says, instead opting for a solo performance that will allow her voice to take front and centre.
Asked if it was challenging learning the ins and outs of field recording and then incorporating such organic elements into her songs, McDaniel unequivocally answers that it was no problem at all.
“There’s sound everywhere,” she says.
