Press release –
Contemporary folk artist Caroline Marie Brooks, 1/3 of the award-winning trio Good Lovelies, returns with her sophomore album, Light and Matter. Set for release on October 23, with distribution by Outside Music, Brooks travelled to Nova Scotia to work with celebrated producer Joshua Van Tassel (Jenn Grant, Bahamas, Rose Cousins) on this new collection of songs. The record spills over with visions of nature rendered in earthy folk-pop, locating wonder and comfort in the nourishing tendencies of the wider world’s green and blue swaths of abundance while also coming to terms with the complexity of being in fellowship with other living things.
Brooks opens the album with the lead single “Make it Happen,” out today, a shuffling, road-worn ramble through the process of coming to embrace hopefulness. The song came to be at the Banff Centre during the deep of winter. “The moon was brilliant, shining through the trees onto the snow, and I wanted to catch a bit of that moonlight on my face,” Brooks recalls. “I stepped out into the cold and, as I heard the door click behind me, I knew I’d locked myself outside in my socks, in February, in Alberta!”
Around her time at the Banff Centre, Brooks had also been thinking a lot about self-activation and how to break free from inner doubt in order to just get the work done. “I had messaged my sister-in-law earlier that day saying ‘I can’t get my hopes up’ and she had responded, ‘Let’s combine our hopes and make it happen.’ Once I figured a way back into the cabin, this song came flowing out,” she shares.
“Make it Happen” was recorded in Nova Scotia in April 2026 with Van Tassel (drums, percussion), Dean Drouillard (bass, electric guitar, Wurlitzer, piano) and Brooks playing together. “I was able to play guitar while looking out a big picture window into the woods, which brought me back to writing this song in the forest of the Banff Centre back in 2023,” says Brooks. She later recorded her lead vocal at Robbie Grunwald’s Toronto studio and added Christine Bougie’s beautiful lap steel and electric guitar textures, which perfectly captured the feeling of the song.
On Light and Matter, sweet, bright melodies wrap like vines around the connections in sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, and the natural world that Brooks writes thoughtfully about, buoyed by intricate, rhythm-forward arrangements filled out primarily via accomplished musical companions. Driven by Brooks’ generative, poetic lyricism, Light and Matter‘s delicate, stirring songs pay the cherished phenomenon of good company forward, offering balm in the “solitude of twilight” and joy among your own loved or soon-to-be loved ones.
What’s The Story About Caroline Brooks?
A lifelong musician and creator, Caroline Marie Brooks is perhaps best known as a member of heralded folk/country harmony trio Good Lovelies, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. She has also lent her singing and guitar talents to friends like Kathleen Edwards, Jim Bryson, Lily Frost, and Peter Katz on projects of their own.
Her debut solo album, Everything at the Same Time (September 2021) drew
https://carolinemariebrooks.com/
WRITTEN BY: Caroline Marie Brooks
PRODUCED AND MIXED BY: Joshua Van Tassel
MASTERED BY: Heather Kirby – Dreamlands Studio
MUSICIANS:
Caroline Marie Brooks: Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Piano
Dean Drouillard: Bass, Electric Guitar, Wurlitzer, Piano
Joshua Van Tassel: Drums, Percussion
Christine Bougie: Electric Guitar, Lap Steel
