Slow Leaves – Acapela Studio

Slow Leaves’ latest album, Meantime, is about waiting for something momentous to occur in life, and how all the mundane stuff that happens during the wait actually constitutes what is meaningful. If you blink, you miss it; if you think too much, you miss it. If you’re lucky, in the meantime, there’s love and there’s death and not much less. Grant Davidson, the Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-based artist behind Slow Leaves says: “I see this album as a love letter, a collection of messes that fit neatly within a regular life if there is such a thing. In that sense, I guess these songs serve as a reminder for myself, since I’m forgetful, that all moments are equal in that they pass through us once only in long stretches of boredom or by bursts of love and death. In the meantime, I only hope not to let any more go by unnoticed.”

Slow Leaves is a self-contained solo project with Davidson curating every aspect of the music and its presentation, including being the multi-instrumentalist, producer, cover art designer, photographer, and video director. He views the totality of these various aspects as being essential parts of a larger project of self-understanding through artistic methods. His folk and psych-rock stylings recall older songwriters like Mickey Newbury, Nick Drake, Gene Clark, and Neil Young. But they also live in the world of modern classic writers like Andy Shauf, Bonny “Prince” Billy, Bedouine, and Bill Callahan. His voice has been compared to Roy Orbison or Bryan Ferry.

Davidson began playing guitar at age 15, inspired after discovering a Led Zeppelin II cassette tape in his older brother’s room. It was a finger-picked guitar however that would eventually form the heart of his songs. After three shoe-string budget albums under his own name, Davidson debuted as Slow Leaves in 2014 with Beauty Is So Common, followed by Enough About Me (2017), Shelf Life (2020), and Holiday (2021). Meantime comes out on Birthday Cake and Make My Day Records on June 30, 2023