Press release –
A full decade after intentionally disbanding, Federal Lights return better than ever, with their new (and third) album Celebration of Failure, (Aporia Records), out June 19th; they mark the occasion with a record release party/concert on June 18th at Sidestage, in their hometown of Winnipeg.
Starting in 2010, Jean-Guy Roy built his band Federal Lights slowly, stubbornly, with a lot of himself in it. From Winnipeg, they carved a sound and a following that crossed oceans. They toured Germany. They made records that mattered. They stood on stages in cities that had no reason to care and made them care. Roy had a vision of what Federal Lights should be, but somewhere along the way, by 2016, the distance between that and the reality became too heavy to carry – not because the band had failed, but because he’d decided it had. Roy turned off all the Federal Lights: social media accounts, gone; the digital footprint of years, deleted; all of it vanishing into the ether.
Eventually, Roy found that he couldn’t delete the part of himself that needs to make music, any more than he could delete a lung. In the post-band silence, he didn’t find relief, but absence. Eventually, the absence asked, “Now what?” The answer was a reckoning, not a resurrection. Roy turned the Federal Lights back on.
The result, Celebration of Failure, offers deep, authentic explorations of the vulnerable emotional states encountered on this long journey of destruction and rebuilding. Deploying few but well-chosen words in each song, Federal Lights move through desperation, obsession, depression, escape, defeat, loss, and ultimately, redemption through choice. The sound is anthemic, atmospheric rock – with compelling synth and treated-electric-guitar textures – that would fit neatly on a playlist beside Radiohead, Brian Eno, and Arcade Fire.
A standout song, “Two Rivers,” for example, moves from an acoustic guitar strum, to a crisply picked electric one, to a huge surf-twang solo. It’s a tribute to Winnipeg, and just as the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet in that city, then go their separate ways, so too does the couple in the song. “Winnipeg is a city sometimes loathed and feared by its nation,” says Roy. “The song pays homage to the juxtaposition of the two rivers that bring beauty to the city, but also have the ability to hide its secrets. Everything washes out in the end.”
Another gem, the hard-rocking “Night Movers,” tells the story of Johatsu, a man driving all night through North Ontario, en route from Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district to seek the refuge of anonymity in Nome, Alaska. “It’s a man escaping his past,” says Roy, “and taking his penitence in the harsh Canadian shield, for the way in which he left, and for the people he knowingly hurt.” A short reprise of the song’s final lines, “Out to Sea,” closes the album.
“Celebration of Failure” is dark and mysterious song, propelled by a trancelike synth and a small but unsettling choir of voices. Haunted by the inevitability of death, it builds to a truly frightening crescendo. “It’s about wrestling with our desires, choosing which ones we allow ourselves to pursue, which ones we hide, and which ones we deny,” says Roy. “The consequences of those very choices never remain in the dark, but are pushed out into the light, revealing who we are.”
And just so, Celebration of Failure reveals Roy and Federal Lights, standing strong in the light, after a long and difficult sojourn in the dark.
Winnipeg band Federal Lights has been making music since the band debuted in 2010 with singer-songwriter duo Jean-Guy Roy and Rob Mitchell, rounded out by drummer Chris Gaudry and keyboardist Jodi Roy. Since its inception, Federal Lights has toured both North America and Europe multiple times, playing shows and festivals including Reeperbahn, SXSW, NXNE, Canadian Music Week, and the Western Canadian Music Awards (WCMAs). In 2013, the band signed with Aporia Records, and went on to win the WCMA for Aboriginal Record of the Year in 2014 for their album We Were Found in the Fog. Federal Lights has been featured in Rolling Stone magazine has held multiple No. 1 spots on CBC Radio 3, as well as on college radio across Canada.
