Hamilton rockers This Mad Desire have returned with new album American Dream, which is available to listen to now.
The album features songs with titles like "So What Oh Well (Cocaine in the Limo)," "Antifa and the Supremacists" and "Jesus Came from Jupiter." It also includes covers of Alice Cooper's "Elected" and Bob Wiseman's "What the Astronaut Noticed and Then Suggested," plus it incorporates Leonard Cohen's poetry on "Perfect Ring."
On the accidental Cohen tribute, vocalist Mackenzie Kristjon said, "I initially wrote 'Perfect Ring' while in high school in Thunder Bay. A friend close to my early high school band had a friend who had [died by] suicide, and she asked me to set music to this poem which was supposedly her last writing. I sang this song in her honour for years. Eventually, on a bus in rural Manitoba, I was reading an anthology of Leonard Cohen's poetry I borrowed from my mother and came across what turns out had been the lyrics I'd been singing all along! It's easily one of my favourite songs I've ever sang."
A large portion of the album was recorded at the Hamilton Public Library's Dundas branch, which has a recording studio in the middle of the children's section. Says Kristjon, "I'd be recording some background vocal parts, and the whole library would hear me and be startled. The kids would come up to the glass, and the mothers would yank them back. It was interesting, to say the least!"
Additionally, $5 of each sale of the album on Bandcamp will be donated to Black Lives Matter.
Listen to American Dream and watch the video for "Stand Up and Dream Again" below.
The album features songs with titles like "So What Oh Well (Cocaine in the Limo)," "Antifa and the Supremacists" and "Jesus Came from Jupiter." It also includes covers of Alice Cooper's "Elected" and Bob Wiseman's "What the Astronaut Noticed and Then Suggested," plus it incorporates Leonard Cohen's poetry on "Perfect Ring."
On the accidental Cohen tribute, vocalist Mackenzie Kristjon said, "I initially wrote 'Perfect Ring' while in high school in Thunder Bay. A friend close to my early high school band had a friend who had [died by] suicide, and she asked me to set music to this poem which was supposedly her last writing. I sang this song in her honour for years. Eventually, on a bus in rural Manitoba, I was reading an anthology of Leonard Cohen's poetry I borrowed from my mother and came across what turns out had been the lyrics I'd been singing all along! It's easily one of my favourite songs I've ever sang."
A large portion of the album was recorded at the Hamilton Public Library's Dundas branch, which has a recording studio in the middle of the children's section. Says Kristjon, "I'd be recording some background vocal parts, and the whole library would hear me and be startled. The kids would come up to the glass, and the mothers would yank them back. It was interesting, to say the least!"
Additionally, $5 of each sale of the album on Bandcamp will be donated to Black Lives Matter.
Listen to American Dream and watch the video for "Stand Up and Dream Again" below.