When Exclaim! speaks with Leif Vollebekk, it's a couple of months before the release of his fifth studio album Revelation, and the Montreal-based singer-songwriter is admittedly puzzled by it.
Vollebekk is still figuring out the meaning of his own lyrics and seems to be in shock when explaining the strange ways the songs revealed themselves to him. "You're the first person I've talked to about the record beside, like, my dad," he acknowledges.
But for all of Vollebekk's bewilderment about the new album, he is certain of one thing: "This is the record that I've always wanted to make."
The chaotic energy Vollebekk brings to the conversation is in stark contrast to the tone of Revelation itself. Arriving five years after his last studio release (2019's New Ways), Revelation is remarkably peaceful. Vollebekk's folky and soft rock songs, many of which centre his easy-going piano playing, have his familiarly gentle and free-flowing pace now magnified by dreamy orchestral additions heard throughout the album.
The album's calmness, as Vollebekk explains, is a reflection of the time when he wrote it. Revelation emerged in the quiet years of the pandemic lockdowns. After more than a decade of making records and relentless touring, Vollebekk embraced solitude. He built a recording studio and tended to his garden. His primary companions were books, records, and the people who visited him in his dreams. "I basically had two years of retirement," he laughs.
The change of pace sparked Vollebekk's creativity. He steadily wrote songs over this period, often in the early morning when his dreams were still fresh. "A lot of the songs are dreams that I wrote down," he explains, before giddily recounting a dream he had with the late singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley which inspired album opener "Rock and Roll."
"Early in the pandemic I had this one dream where I was in a rehearsal room and Jeff Buckley was playing this song to me," he recalls. "I was watching his hands on his guitar to try and see how to play it, and then in his falsetto he sang, 'rock and roll.' I woke up and I was like, 'Oh my god, it was a dream.' And then I thought, 'I love that Jeff Buckley song… Wait a minute!' I ran to my guitar and I wrote it out because I thought maybe it was a song he wrote, but it wasn't."
Vollebekk's approach to recording Revelation was similar to the one he had for his 2017 album Twin Solitude which nabbed a spot on the Polaris Music Prize short list and earned Vollebekk his first JUNO nomination. "I get a lot of feedback from people who say that Twin Solitude is their favourite record of mine, and it's my favourite too," he says.
"I really liked New Ways, but I was experimenting on it. People might say they like a song from New Ways but they really resonate with Twin Solitude, and they talk about it as a whole, and I know why. I felt something the whole time I was making it. I plunked down in one studio, got a band together, and kept the sound the same."
While some of Revelation was recorded at Sunset Studios in Los Angeles with drummer Jim Keltner (who's played with everybody from John Lennon to Bob Dylan to Fiona Apple), the bulk of it was recorded at Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, NY. Vollebekk chose this studio because it's where Americana trio Bonny Light Horseman recorded their 2020 self-titled debut, which he says is "the best sounding record [he's] heard in the last 20 years."
Bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Olivier Fairfield, who both played on Twin Solitude, joined Vollebekk at Dreamland alongside Australian singer-songwriter Angie McMahon (on backing vocals). Together, they played the songs all the way through, choosing the take that felt the best. Added later were contributions from steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar (Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Rod Stewart), Bonny Light Horseman's Anaïs Mitchell, a 28-piece orchestra, and even the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
"When I recorded my previous records, things would organically happen in the studio, and for this one I kind of committed to that," Vollebekk explains. "The band and I, we'd spend a day getting sounds to be exactly like how I hear it in my head, and then the next day it's like the previous day didn't happen, and we just come in and try to get a take that feels good. It's so weird, because once you get a take that you like, there's no question that that's the one that goes on the record, and then you move on to the next song. There's this feeling of floating on air that lasts six minutes and then it's over."
By the end of our conversation, Vollebekk isn't any closer to revealing the meanings of his songs. Or maybe he does know and just wants to hold them close. Throughout the album, Vollebekk returns to descriptions of emerging from a low point. On the hazy "Surfer's Journal" he sings, "I guess I came here because I was on fire and I don't want to burn," and on the album's first single, "Moondog," he repeats, "Tired of living in the pouring rain." Perhaps this is a record about the blissful results that can come when you accept what is given to you.
"Making this record was the most satisfying and beautiful experience of my life. I don't know how I'm going to write another [one]," he concedes. "Life always changes, but for the first time ever, I got exactly what I wanted. I didn't ask for anything, and these are the songs that came."