“There is melancholy to it, but a bit of hope”

The East Pointers released Schoonertown last week, and it’s been on regular rotation here since.

Most of the tracks are familiar, having been titrated out to us to enjoy individually over the last year. There are some new ones, though, and Sea Spirit is by far and away my favourite.

It is by no means a classic East Pointers song; indeed, it stands quite apart from the rollicking good times of the rest of the album. 

More than anything, it evokes the music of The Gloaming (the Irish-American supergroup), music I first encountered in this brilliant piece of television a decade ago, music that seems both fresh and new and like it’s always existed, music that, in the right frame of mind, can induce tears.

Not surprising given the track’s provenance, as the band described to Spill:

The East Pointers managed to pay tribute to Koady with a song that he actually wrote. The song, “Sea Spirit” is a beautiful instrumental and it anchors the album, both in tone and location.

“We finished off the album with that,” said Chaisson. “It is actually an instrumental track that Koady wrote. He wrote that and we always had in our pocket as a band and not knowing what to do with it. I remember Koady writing it and we were going to write lyrics to it, and we never had a proper recording of Koady playing. So, Jake and I decided to sit down at the piano and the fiddle and have our take of it. Really, the ‘sea spirit’ title comes from Koady. We all love the sea, but Koady especially loved it and made his living on the sea as well. We thought it was an appropriate way to wrap up the album. There’s a lot of themes throughout the album, but “Sea Spirit” wraps it all up.”

“There’s an interesting moment recording that too,” added Charron, “I live right across from an elementary school and while we were recording it, the recess was on, and you couldn’t really hear it inside, and we thought, we should put a mic outside and capture some of this. It just felt that the timing was really nice because Koady had such a youthful energy too. There is melancholy to it, but a bit of hope. It turned out really nice.”

“There is melancholy to it, but a bit of hope.” That’s it, exactly.