Patrick Watson

There was a time, shortly after the turn of the century, when Patrick Watson's story was written by others. The successor to Rufus Wainwright? The singer-songwriter who won the Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album of the year, beating Arcade Fire and Feist with Close to Paradise? A friend of The Cinematic Orchestra? But then came another moment, soon after, when his theatrical folk narrative became so awe-inspiring that it began to be his alone. Or is there anyone else who can romanticise an ordinary walk just because Lighthouse, Je te laisserai des mots or The Great Escape are playing on their headphones?

Perhaps, in fact, it is now the stories of others that are being written based on that of Patrick Watson. On uh oh, his eighth studio album, Watson surrounds himself with classic voices (Martha Wainwright, MARO) and new ones (Solann, Charlotte Oleena) to shape an album on which the Canadian explores those moments of uncertainty when everything collapses, and vertigo takes over. For him, one of those moments was when, in the winter of 2023, he temporarily lost his voice – he was unable to speak for three months – which led him to approach his new album in a slightly different way: inviting all these voices that he would like to hear singing his songs. Once he recovered, he stuck with that approach and turned it into the duets that feature on his first album since Better in the Shade (2022).