Passim Streams: Julian Taylor

Evolving creatively is a key goal for any artist, especially for songwriters. Being able to tap into the vein of shared experiences by way of a personalized point of view is a gift the best songwriters are able to build upon from song to song and album to album. Only the best of them are able to transition from being a soother one minute to a soothsayer the next with relative ease, confidence, and expertise.

And that’s exactly what Toronto-based singer/songwriter Julian Taylor has done with the eight deeply intimate songs that comprise his striking new solo effort, The Ridge. Co-produced by Taylor and longtime collaborator Saam Hashemi, mixed by Hashemi, and mastered by Noah Mintz, The Ridge was recorded at The Woodshed, a Toronto-area studio owned by a Canadian alt-country stalwarts Blue Rodeo. The Ridge — set for release on CD, vinyl, and via most digital platforms on September 25, 2020 from Howling Turtle, Inc. — is the aural result of a songwriter clearly embracing his prime.

“Human Race,” a particularly seductive earworm that finds Taylor shaping his own path beyond the intersecting songwriting crossroads of Mark Knopfler, Gordon Lightfoot, and Robbie Robertson, initially made its way to listeners’ ears in February. Additional single-track digital debuts from The Ridge will follow in the months ahead of the full album’s release date to give fans new and old alike a taste of what’s to come. “I hope people can find solace in this music,” offers Taylor. “It’s meant to draw you in and really touch your heart.”

Each song on The Ridge represents an acoustic-driven mixture of styles that reflects Taylor’s range as a creative force by building upon the templates forged during his tenure fronting the alt-rocking collective Staggered Crossing as well as the fine funk and R&B-driven foundation he continues to mine with the still-active Julian Taylor Band. From the title track’s ruminations on Taylor’s formative days spent on his Grandparent’s farm in British Columbia to the hopeful swoon of “Over the Moon” to the tribal-energy landscape that permeates “Ballad of the Young Troubadour” to the Tex-Mex Canadian-Western vibe mashup of “Love Enough,” the honest, raw nature of The Ridge enables listeners a myriad of personally relatable entry points into Taylor’s enlightening narrative tales.