How do you come back to yourself? First, it’s important to understand you have become lost, and admit you’ve veered off path. How then do you begin to piece yourself back together? This is the journey Gabrielle Shonk, the JUNO Award-nominated singer and songwriter, takes us on with her sophomore album, Across The Room, set for release February 24, 2023.
The eleven-track record chronicles the big and small feelings of heartache, and the hope that comes with endings and new beginnings. This excavation of self and purpose seemed to be a long time coming. “It’s not always the easiest to look inward. But, when it is easy, you hold on to all those small victories— finding a sense of wholeness within yourself,” says Shonk.
Today, Shonk is sharing another new track from the album, “People Pleaser”, a track about being sick and tired of being a ‘People Pleaser’ and wanting to move forward and on from it.”
MORE ABOUT ACROSS THE ROOM
Searching for a sense of wholeness has been central to Shonk’s path in the five years since her self-titled debut album. Conversations about a sophomore record began not long after the success of her debut, with her former major label asking to see and hear new material. Shonk recalls succumbing to a self-critical, internal pressure during that time for what that next album would be; a creative blockage that made her unsure of what she wanted to say at all.
Some songs on Across The Room are a few years old. They began as stowed away writing projects in green rooms; whatever downtime she had during a busy touring schedule, Shonk and frequent collaborator and co-writer Jessy Caron (Men I Trust) worked on new material together. Out of those sessions emerged “Reminds Me of You”, a wistful, sombre song emanating a familiar feeling of grief when everything reminds you of the love you’ve lost. The coalescence of the track was natural, and Shonk started to feel renewed confidence.
Over 2018 to 2019, Shonk brought some songs to Jesse Mac Cormack, whom Shonk calls a “musical genius,” even doing a bit of pre-production and writing in the studio. Mac Cormack co-composed “Remember to Breathe”, a self-soothing song Shonk wrote as a reminder to herself while dealing with anxiety to come back to the essentialness of breath. Encouraged by the creative output during this period with her long-time collaborators, Shonk brought these tracks to her former label. She was met with a tepid response, asking for different material. Her creative disposition began to cool and put her back on a track of uncertainty.
It was in the early days of the pandemic that Shonk found she could piece together a new creative and artistic direction more authentic to her. Tucked herself away in her apartment in Quebec City, her hometown, she rediscovered her love of listening to and making music, something she says she had been disconnected from in the grind of working as a professional musician. In this place of safety and comfort (Shonk even converted her parent’s garage into a practice space), she re-learned and re-embraced melodies she loved in her youth. Some records and musicians Shonk fondly fell back into include: George Harrison, The Beatles, Al Green, Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers, Billie Holiday, and Chet Baker.
Shonk felt called to sit down and practice more than before, noting her guitar skills improved, helping with other creative aspects that now ripple throughout Across The Room. “Creating without boundaries, or expectations, and just for the fun of it was what my process had been missing. I felt set free,” she says.
Her internal work started to deepen. “Coming home and coming back to myself, I thought, ‘what do I want to sound like? What resonates with me right now? Where’s this going?’ I kept going back to those questions and that’s where things became clear to me.”
At the end of 2021, with this new body of work formed during her creative seclusion, Shonk and her label decided it was best to amicably part ways, and she brought the songs that formed Across The Room to Arts & Crafts.
This delicate, brimming sophomore offering, now free of past constraints, could be made with the rich sounds and verses from her closest collaborators and best friends. “I made this whole album with people who are really close and dear to me,” she says. “Why go look anywhere else when all these amazingly talented people are my friends and with whom I actually enjoy spending my time? I wanted the process to be fun, personal, and authentic—so I worked with the people who know me best.”
Across The Room was recorded during the first half of 2022, splitting production time around rural Quebec and Montreal with Mac Cormack. Shonk brought herself fully into view. “I found my creative groove. I felt so much more grounded, independent and confident in my own capacities as an artist, musician, and songwriter, and stopped blocking and judging my creative flow, which gave me my best work yet,” she says.
This album prods at some of the deepest fears, insecurities, and questions a person can have about themself, like on “People Pleaser”, a song grappling with what happens when you place other people’s needs above your own, and “5 A.M.”, a smooth, jazz-inflected track putting Shonk back into the moment of seeing someone from her past for the first time again, something that reverberates in recognition a thousand times over if you’ve ever been so lucky to love hard and feel it even harder when it ends. “How We Used To Be”, moody and with sonic textures of 90s R&B, picks up more romantic nostalgia by reminiscing about what a relationship was like before it fell apart. On “Aftertaste”, Shonk ponders over animated synths her relationship to partying as a way to cope with the pressures of life. The closing track, “Quand le calme reviendra”, written during a storm on a writing retreat in Gaspésie, Quebec, questions what will happen after all that we have learned and endured during these unsettling years.
Every track on Across The Room began as a feeling. Each was the seed of something Shonk noted down and stashed away for later, once she had felt what she needed and could reasonably tackle such subject matter later on. Because the process of moving on begins with coming to terms with a feeling before understanding what really happened. Clarity always comes later.
And that’s the throughline of this sublime sophomore offering. Across The Room, a deeply personal and lucid record, is the result of years of feeling, thinking, and breathing life back into a creative spirit.
