Not sure I ever had SEO supporting sway, but I really appreciate the kind words for my new record from such a great writer and someone with discerning music tastes!
Also, I had completely forgotten about the Nils track I recorded with pals Jim and Jeff under the name 'Owl Mountain Radar'. Check out the amazing covers on that Have Not Been The Same comp.
I'm a big fan of Michael's Substack because it's always packed with curated music info to help me keep tabs on what's going on out there. Case in point: I was shocked beyond shocked to read that my pals in Strawberry are actual Polaris Prize Nominees! What a world.
Also: Bill Fox. We covered 'Second Best' in Rhume, which is a song on Bill's band Mice's record 'For Almost Ever Scooter'. I can vouch that Jon Bartlett is a huge fan. Now I need to spend some time with 'Shelter From The Smoke'.
Thanks Michael!
Read more and subscribe to Michael's excellent Substack here.
Chris Page sounds like a guy who drives around northern Ontario with Husker Du and the Rolling Stones in his tapedeck, thinking about past punk gigs at Montreal’s Les Foufounes and mishearing Tom Petty lyrics so that they can be rewritten as a new song called “Running Down a Drain.” When he gets home, he taps into his inner Lou Barlow or Elliott Smith—or, if he’s as much of a ’90s indie nerd as I think he is, maybe some East River Pipe—and starts writing songs.
What I do know about Chris Page is that he once fronted the Stand GT, a pop-punk band from the far east of Ontario—east of Cornwall!—who are old enough to have been on Og Records’ final It Came From Canada compilation in 1989, and toured the U.S. and Europe extensively in the ’90s. He resurfaced on Ottawa’s Kelp Records in the 2000s, under the name Camp Radio, with the capital city’s MVP Dave Draves on bass.
His own bio admits he writes “downcast songs,” and it’s not a perverse (or reverse) humblebrag: “How long is this pain built to last?” is a typical lyric. He has an earlier song called “Interstellar Basement Dweller,” and he once covered one of my favourite CanCon obscurities from the ’80s, Rational Youth’s “No More and No Less.”
In other words, right up my alley.
Oh, and he once did me a huge favour when he joined Jim Bryson to cover the Nils’ “Daylight” for a Have Not Been the Same compilation I assembled in 2011.
Despite not following Page’s career closely, was I predisposed to like this latest collection of songs? Yes, dear reader, I was. I am now a fan. No idea what took me my entire adult life to become one, but Split Seconds on Earth certainly made it easy.
Full album hits DSPs in September, but is available on Bandcamp now. In the meantime, 7/10 songs are now streaming as an “EP” called Don’t You Remember? on your favourite service.