Roxanne Potvin revisits the Last Days of Summer in her new single and video — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
Taken from her acclaimed 2018 EP All It Was, the bittersweet piano ballad takes you back to the beach for a rear-view-mirror glance at the days of sun, sand, beach balls and ice cream. But underneath the scenes of warm nostalgia she and director Petr Maur paint a vivid picture of loss and longing.
“The feeling I tried to capture with this song is the longing to hold on to life’s sweet moments and the melancholy stemming from the reality that you can’t, so there’s simultaneous joy and sadness in the recollection,” says Potvin. “I wanted the video to evoke that by showing the places where those moments happened, still beautiful but deserted.”
Taking a bold, novel approach is nothing new for the Juno Award-nominated singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Gatineau, Que. Having taken full creative control of her career with the self-produced, independently released 2016 album For Dreaming — containing the singles I Thought I’d Miss You and The March — Potvin returned last fall with All It Was. Building on the roots-pop approach she established with For Dreaming, the five-song collection dove deeper into Potvin’s personal journey, adding elements of psychedelia and neo-soul to her ever-expanding sound.
On Last Days of Summer, that creativity comes in the shape and sound of accordions. Eight of them, to be exact. As she explains: “I was on a very limited budget with this EP and because I couldn’t afford a string section, I layered about eight accordion tracks on Last Days of Summer. It came out sounding kind of like a pump organ/synth strings, which I ended up liking and keeping.”
What’s perhaps most addictive about All It Was is the EP’s sultry and sexy vibe, something Potvin says came out of dating again after the end of a long-term relationship. “Dealing with the longing and loneliness that I went through after being on my own again was something I’d never experienced that strongly before,” she admits. “It stirred up a lot of stuff and so I had a lot to say.”
Hear it all on All It Was (below), connect via her website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or catch her live:
Tour Dates With Colin James:
Tuesday, April 2- Thunder Bay Community Auditorium, Thunder Bay, Ontario
Thursday, April 4- Capitol Centre, North Bay, Ontario
Friday, April 5- First Ontario Concert Hall, Hamilton, Ontario
Sunday, April 6- Sony Centre, Toronto, Ontario
Monday, April 8- RBC Theatre, London, Ontario
Tuesday, April 9- Showplace Theatre, Peterborough, Ontario
Wednesday, April 10- Grand Theatre, Kingston, Ontario
Friday, April 12- Palais Montcalm, Quebec City, Quebec
Sunday, April 14- The Playhouse, Fredericton, New Brunswick
Monday, April 15- Imperial Theatre, Saint John, New Brunswick
Tuesday, April 16- Capitol Theatre, Moncton NB
Thursday, April 18- Confederation Centre for The Arts, Charlottetown, PEI
Friday, April 19- Rebecca Cohn- Halifax, NS
Solo Western Canadian Tour Dates:
Thursday, May 9- Chez Petervine, Sundre AB
Friday, May 10- King Eddy, Calgary AB
Saturday, May 11- The Aviary, Edmonton AB
Tuesday, May 14- Snedden House Concert- Kelowna, BC
Wednesday, May 15- Dream Cafe, Penticton BC
Thursday, May 16- Basement House Concerts, Kamloops BC
Friday, May 17- The Heatley, Vancouver BC
