Deanna Drudge makes every second count on her new album Killing Time — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
At 11 tracks strong, the release is woven together by a lifetime of earnest experience laid bare among bars of song. Not bad for an artist who almost threw in the towel a few years ago. “Sometime during 2018, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue with music,” Drudge confides, but says the lockdown of 2020 changed her perspective. “I knew I needed to create something … Create something mostly for myself with no expectations of how it would turn out and what I would do with it after.
“The songs evolved from a time when a decision was made to face and beat an almost decade long struggle with anxiety, depression and self-doubt,” she reveals. “Most of the songs stem from a place of introspection; acknowledging the place I had found myself in and the moments throughout the next two years of battling toward self-acceptance.”
Enlisting the production talent of Kevin Ker, Drudge — who hails originally from Ontario farmlands, but has found herself among the wooded scenery of Squamish, B.C. — allowed the heaviness in her heart to spin itself into the fabric of the record. And between her and Ker, Killing Time is an unmistakably honest offering and insight into a woman’s resolve to give herself licence to heal and create. On the single and video June — a folk prog-rock charming ode to unrequited interest, and mustering the courage to say how she feels — electric chords and haunting harmonies lay claim to nods of the fantastical pique of ’90s female alt-rock.
As much a journal, as it is a laboriously concocted accomplishment years in the making, Killing Time mingles wondering with wonderment into a captivating cocktail of life and love experiences, fears and conquering, mixed into music and served neat. It’s time well spent.
Watch June above, listen to Killing Time below, and keep up with Deanna Drudge on her website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
