PERPETUAL OPTIMIST, THE (LP)

Luke Lalonde is the lead singer of JUNO-nominated indie-rock mainstays, Born Ruffians. Alongside the band''''s 5 full-length records, Lalonde has become known as a prolific solo writer, collaborating with a variety of artists across several genres, including Caribou. In 2012, he released his debut solo effort, '''Rhythymnals''''. That album found Lalonde exploring a more electro-indie space, moving from his signature New Wave howl to a more echoey, crooning pure-pop sensibility. The release was met with notable acclaim, with critics drawing attention to the impressive breadth of Lalonde''''s creative capacity.??In the seven year gap between his debut and sophomore releases, Lalonde wrote and recorded two collaborative albums that he shelved. I wanted to make something that represents me entirely. The sound of this record sort of found me while I was writing songs in Brooklyn when I started playing around with different ways to record myself. Every song on this album is near and dear to me. I'm extremely proud of it.??His forthcoming LP, 'The Perpetual Optimist', will be out November 22, 2019 via Paper Bag Records/Warp Publishing. The album finds the singer writing more in the vein of Americana greats like John Prine, Roger Miller, and Kris Kristofferson; with nods to 60's pop of Jacques Dutronc, and the Kinks. It is a record shaped as much by his own musical upbringing as it is by the frenetic world around him. He writes with a more pointed perspective than ever, addressing 2019''''s most pressing issues: the escalating threat of climate change, connection in the face of manic uncertainty, and mortality. '''The Perpetual Optimist'''' is Luke Lalonde''''s most mature and confident work to date.??ARTIST STATEMENT:??I have a new album coming out on November 22nd. It's called The Perpetual Optimist.??I was moving back to Toronto from New York and I found myself pulling into a cemetery. I just sort of ended up there. I frequently end up in cemeteries, where I'll sit parked in my car or on a bench to jot some ideas down--lyrics, poems, drawings--surrounded by strangers in the dirt. I move a lot.??When I was a kid, my grandfather, Charlie, would bring me to one cemetery in particular where he used to work as a teenager. I think it made him feel young. It reminded him of a carefree time. As counter intuitive as that may seem on the surface, it actually makes a lot of sense: You're younger than pretty much anyone in there, and all of them are about as carefree as you can get. We would go and chat with the groundskeepers, drive around the plots, and he'd point out all the people he knew who were buried there. Charlie and June were my mother's parents. Their lives were marked with more death than most would be able to handle. He and June are buried there now.??Now that I'm older, I travel a lot. In Germany, I saw row upon row of tombstone after tombstone marked with the same date of death. Reading the same date over and over can move you to tears. In some places there will just be a building stocked with innumerable small compartments, thousands of names on silver placards, much like a post office. Except instead of holding people's flyers and junk mail, they have your mom, or your uncle Terry. One of those had a nice koi pond outside. Call me old fashioned but I still prefer a big park filled with coffins, at least aesthetically speaking.??Recently I've been worrying a lot. I think a lot of people have. There's a lot of bad things happening out there. I worry mostly about the planet, and the animals living on it. I worry that we humans, so prone to consume and destroy, do more evil than good. I think our planet is God and she is attempting to buck us off now.??But I also worry about myself. I worry about the people I love, and about innumerable inane things throughout my day that eclipse the fact that we're undergoing a mass extinction event. I don't know if we're equipped to comprehend an apocalypse that moves so slowly. Or maybe we're all just wired with a firebrand optimism.??So as I sit surrounded by decaying corpses and summer skies, waiting for a muse, I've realized, that's what the record is about, more or less. I sense we're all bound for that eternal rest. My pen hovers above the page and I think about humanity in the 21st century, suspended on a wire in a hurricane.