Leif Vollebekk’s New Ways is out today via Secret City Records - it is the sound of desire in its unfolding. A sonic documentation of everything that Leif felt; tenderness and violence, sex and rebirth. "Anything that I wouldn't ever want to tell anyone - I just put it on the record," he says. Uncut already gave it an 8/10 stating "Leif Vollebekk's synesthesia is working overtime...the unhurried observational vividness of extended takes in a Linklater film. A self-described ‘recovering Dylanphile,’ Vollebekk relapses on the knotty ‘Blood Brother’ and the panoramic ‘Apalachee Plain,’ the bittersweet lilt of his voice all tangled up in blue,"
while Rolling Stone France called it “his most elegant album yet”. The headlining tour is beginning to see sold-out dates in Toronto and Montreal, but before them Leif will visit Europe while supporting Half Moon Run for the entire month of November.
Leif also shared this week a live version of “Transatlantic Flight”, filmed at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto with a 10-piece string section. Vollebekk performed on the famous Glenn Gould Yamaha piano.
"I kept picturing playing this {transatlantic flight} live and being surrounded by string instruments. Cellos, violins, violas, double basses... and a grand piano being like a mast in the middle of this big wooden ship of musicians. I asked my manager if she thought something like that could ever happen. The next day she told me Massey Hall would love to do exactly that. And further, I would get to play their Glenn Gould piano. For all this - and more - I am eternally grateful to them.” - Leif Vollebekk
The recording is courtesy of The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall and part of the Roy Thomson Hall’s VARIATIONS Series.
Released last June, the first single "Hot Tears" was featured on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic Top 10 for a number of weeks and was recently featured as a KCRW Today's Top Tune. The song quickly reached well over two million streams. Leif performed a Free At Noon concert over at WXPN last week (listen here) and was in the CBC ‘q’ studio yesterday (listen here) The NY Times recently said that Leif’s songs are "pensive and restless, blossoming with stream-of-consciousness verses that bear the marks of long nights spent alone on the road."
