Cedar Sky know that the heart wants what it wants in the animated lyric video for their single Diana — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
The story of a past love that sparks a new heartbreak, the slow-burning rock waltz is the leadoff single from the Saskatoon band’s Oct. 17 album Crossing the Rubicon.
“The song tells the story of a man who falls in love with a woman from his past and he must leave the one he’s with,” says singer-songwriter Joshua James. “He wishes he could change but the heart ultimately decides who you love.”
That level of commitment and obsession are nothing new to the long-serving rocker — but fortunately, he’s had a bit more say in the matter. After 10 years of false starts in the indie-rock trenches, James began “leaning into new perspectives and shaking the Etch A Sketch of life,” he says. “It finally became time to lay it all on the line.
“I put everything I could into releasing one of the most emotionally charged — yet microscopically complex — albums in me. Crossing the Rubicon is a journey through my life and the stories I’ve lived,” says James. “It focuses on love, compassion, fear, loneliness, and curiosity for the unknown … The complexities that make us all human.”
While Crossing the Rubicon tells James’ stories, his bandmates — Cole Jordan on percussion and backing vocals, Jesse Kane with lead guitar, and Aaron Hamoki Seaman on bass — helped bring them to life.
“When we went in to record, we took what I wrote and each of the other members added their own takes on how the songs made them feel,” James recalls. “This, in the end, morphed a completely different — and very much a collective — representation on what the songs mean.
“There’s something inside each and every one of us that drives us to do the things we do, think what we think, and feel what we feel. Possibly some data that skipped through time and was printed on our individual code, who knows? It could be based on our upbringing and the family that raised us, or learned through lessons from others. But more often than not we only learn from our own experiences. This includes failures and victories.”
Watch Diana above and connect with Cedar Sky via their website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
