Alex Nicol is a rising Montreal-based singer/songwriter, who has spent the pervious five years playing in a number of different projects, including Hoan, an act that released their critically applauded EP Modern Phase in 2017. Nicols stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with the release of his full-length debut All For Nada, which was released through Michel Records and Anniversary Records earlier this year.
“Trust,” All For Nada‘s latest single is a slow-burning and gauzy dream of a song, centered around Nicol’s plaintive falsetto, shimmering guitars, a supple bass line and a soaring hook. And while to my ears, the song brings Canadian blogosphere darlings Loving to mind, the song as Nicol explains in press notes “is about whatever meaning the listener finds in it. For me, it’s about doing laundry (appreciating mundane tasks), honouring old traditions, striving to be a more ecological person, the realities of climate change on everyday life. . . ”
Directed by Paz Ramirez, the recently released video for “Trust” is an equally dream-like visual in which laundry hanging on a line appears in random locations in Montreal, including a Metro stop, a local bar, someone’s incredibly verdant backyard, an underground pedestrian walkway that I’ve actually walked through on a cold and windy November evening, before eventually winding up in Nicol’s empty studio. The video ends with a fully clothed Nicol, walking out of the apartment. “We decided to roll with the idea that hanging dirty laundry exposes one’s ‘weaknesses’ in public,” Nicol says. “In this sense, dirty laundry is a synonym for our secrets, eccentricities, unique quirks – basically the basket of features that come to define each individual, in private and in public. I like to think that our socially mandated ‘weaknesses’ are actually our strengths. In trusting each other to share bits of ourselves, life becomes more relatable, more invigorating.”
