Toronto’s Blunt Chunks — the project helmed by Jaunt’s Caitlin Woelfle-O’Brien — released one of the Best EPs of 2022. Now, the singer-songwriter has announced her debut album, led by new single “Psyche’s Flight.”
The Exclaim! New Faves alum’s first LP, The Butterfly Myth, lands on April 19 via Telephone Explosion. As aforementioned, it follows her excellent self-titled EP. Recorded at David Plowman’s Patchwork Sound and co-produced by Nathan Burley, Woelfle-O’Brien has described the record’s creation as an act of collective faith.
In addition to her bandmates Duncan Hood and Nick Nausbaum (Jaunt), other album contributors include Ed Squires (Badge Époque Ensemble, U.S. Girls), Karen Ng (Andy Shauf), Diego Gaeta (Andre 3000), Quinn Bates (Quarterback) and J Valerione, as well as members of Bernice, Mother Tongues and Queer Songbook Orchestra.
“Getting together with people to create something is that much more special because, as you get older, you know what it’s like to be home alone, to be a little lost and isolated, wondering where your friends are,” the singer-songwriter said in a release. “To have so many people lift me up when I can’t lift myself up is a really beautiful part of the Blunt Chunks project.”
This comes in contrast to the writing process, which is said to have primarily taken place during a self-described mental health spiral, exiled in rural Quebec after a relationship abruptly came to an end. It was a period of time that also saw Woelfle-O’Brien reaching new depths of processing her father’s death three years beforehand.
“In moments of darkness, there’s a resistance to change even though I know that change is essential to my growth as a person,” she explained. In her own Irish mythology, butterflies represent the souls of the dead who appear to reassure loved ones left behind.
But it’s from Greek mythology that comes the story of Psyche, a woman with butterfly wings, who becomes goddess of the soul only after facing adversity to be reunited with Cupid, the god of love.
On the fluttering “Psyche’s Flight,” Woelfle-O’Brien rides the victory of a moment — albeit fleeting — of a weight being lifted. “I know I don’t have much but the wind at my back,” she repeats atop milkweed stocks of reedy woodwinds, dreamy keys and a subsequent guitar solo, “I know I don’t have much, but at least I’ve got that.” It's a grand thawing, the first day that feels like spring, weeks before the seasons actually change.
Hear “Psyche’s Flight” below, alongside the album tracklist.
The Butterfly Myth:
1. Fill My Cup
2. Psyche's Flight
3. High Hopes
4. Limbo
5. Every Day
6. You Are My Love
7. Breathe
8. Higher
9. Can't Be the End
