Zaac Pick is a Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada-born, Vancouver-based singer/songwriter and guitarist. Relocating to Vancouver in the early ’00s, Pick quickly immersed himself in the region’s indie-folk music community as a guitarist and songwriting member of Doubting Paris. After the band was dropped from their American label, Pick decided it was time to venture out on his own, eventually releasing a string of attention-grabbing EPs an an LP which received radio airplay on the CBC and helped built up enough of a profile to land opening slots for The Civil Wars, Noah Gundersen and Bahamas, helped him earn several regional songwriting nominations and awards, as prominent appearances for his work on major network television shows.
Slated for a June 26, 2020 release, Pick’s forthcoming full-length effort Passages reportedly finds the Medicine Hat-born, Vancouver-based singer/songwriting leaving behind the folk simplicity for a sweeping and cinematic sound featuring dance floor friendly rhythms, pulsing guitars, soaring strings and arpeggiating synths but while juxtaposed with his warmly reassuring vocals and thoughtful songwriting tackling heavy subject matter. In the case of Passages, the album’s material thematically focuses on learning to embrace the beauty of life’s liminal states with the album exploring the ambiguities and complexities of desire, masculinity, mental health, disillusionment and finding strength.
Although most of Passages‘ material was written fairly quickly, the recording process initially proved to test Pick’s resolve: three months of unfruitful recording sessions nearly derailed the project. Feeling as though he were floundering, Pick abandoned those early sessions and started over with a new producer Jonathan Anderson, at his Protection Island Studio in rural Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. With Anderson’s guidance, Pick returned the album’s songs to their essence — and the album was recorded with newfound confidence in an inspired burst over a few weeks. Passages also features contributions from some of Vancouver’s finest singer/songwriters and players, including Jordan Klassen, Tourist Company‘s Taylor Swindells, Bre McDaniel, Copilots and Fond of Tigers‘ Skye Brooks and string arrangements by Dear Rouge‘s and Holy Hum‘s sibling duo Brian and Caleb Chan.
Passages’ first single, “Atmosphere” is a slick and seamless synthesis of earnest and deeply personal lyricism, cinematic and 80s inspired soundscapes and soaring hooks paired with what may be some of Pick’s most ambitious and adventurous songwriting.
“‘Atmosphere’,” as Pick explains in press notes “is about loving someone despite the flaws or hardships you face together, and the tension between knowing and mystery in long-term relationships.” Pick notes that “‘Atmosphere acknowledges the space in between, how it expands and contracts, blurring and coming into focus over time. The distance that can grow between two people, that still allows for the desire or willingness to cross it and reconnect. The song started out as a scrap of a melody in a voice memo, and the lyrics came together from some disparate places — a Jeff Wall photograph, an Esther Perel podcast, some therapy.”
