We Speak Music
From Relapse to Revival: Zweng’s ‘Toronto Tapes’ Cuts Deep, Heals Deeper
In an era where overproduction and surface-level lyrics often dominate the music landscape, Toronto Tapes arrives like a breath of crisp Canadian winter air—raw, bracing, and honest to the bone. After years lost in personal turmoil, Zweng returns with a collection that fuses familiar melodies with unflinching self-exploration. It’s not often a cover album hits this hard, but Zweng isn’t just revisiting the past—he’s rewriting it.
Crafted during a year of sobriety and isolation in Toronto, the album was recorded at Kensington Sound Studios under the deft guidance of producer Will Schollar. Every sonic choice feels deliberate, from the ghostly reverb of Pet Sematary to the tender vulnerability of Jeanette. Zweng’s voice is both weathered and warm, like a lighthouse for the lost—rough enough to believe, melodic enough to stay with you.
The album’s strength lies in its duality: familiar songs presented with unfamiliar emotions. Back on the Chain Gang doesn’t just mourn love—it processes memory. Elevation isn’t a high—it’s a hymn to healing. And Take On Me, in Zweng’s hands, sheds its synth-pop skin to become a raw plea to be seen in one’s darkest moments. The songs are transformed, and in the process, so is Zweng.
But it’s the original compositions that truly anchor this emotional journey. Marianne and Jeanette delve into generational pain and maternal longing with the kind of lyrical intimacy that recalls early Elliott Smith or Jeff Buckley. These aren’t just songs—they’re emotional archeology, digging through family histories to find fragments of truth, and maybe a bit of peace.
The closer, Changes, doesn’t land like a neat resolution. Instead, it feels like an open door—a choice to keep evolving, one breath at a time. Zweng’s cover of Ozzy’s classic trades bravado for resignation, and in doing so, becomes the album’s thesis: we don’t become new people overnight. We change, painfully, slowly, and often without fanfare.
Toronto Tapes is less a comeback and more a coming home. It’s a vulnerable, gutsy, and beautifully fractured piece of work that insists on authenticity over perfection. For those in the midst of their own reckoning, Zweng’s voice may be the companion they didn’t know they needed.
We Speak Music
Phoebe June Traces Love, Distance and Heartbreak on New EP ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’
For Phoebe June, some stories are easier to tell through music.
Her new EP, ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’, is an intimate collection that traces the emotional journey of a relationship from the exhilaration of falling in love to distance, uncertainty, heartbreak and, ultimately, learning to let go.
Inspired by artists including Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, Phoebe June combines diary-like lyricism with melancholic ballads, subtle uptempo moments and an understated, emotionally honest production style.
At the centre of the project is ‘Thursday’, a bittersweet track about loving someone from a distance and holding onto the hope that the connection might survive.
Written after Phoebe left a country that held deep personal meaning, and left someone she cared about behind, the song looks back at the relationship from its beginning. Even its title is personal: the two first met on a Thursday.
The song captures the complicated feeling of walking away from something meaningful without believing that it necessarily has to be over. It’s about distance, memory and the possibility of finding your way back to someone, while recognising that hope only works when it goes both ways.
Across six tracks, the EP develops that story in sequence.
‘Everything You Are’ opens the project with the warmth of new love, while ‘Dead Sea’ explores the security of finding someone who helps you stay afloat through difficult times. As the story progresses, ‘Thursday’ introduces separation before ‘Getaway Car’ moves into the aftermath; unanswered questions, lingering attachment and the realisation that someone can profoundly affect your life while still being unhealthy for you.
‘One Day’ leaves the door open to the possibility of a future reunion, balancing hope with the understanding that some relationships may only exist in memory.
The EP closes with ‘Ophelia’, its emotional breaking point. Inspired in part by Friedrich Heyser’s painting of the same name, the track confronts the pain of feeling manipulated and unappreciated after giving everything to someone else.
The result is a project that deliberately moves from light to dark. Phoebe June considered not only the narrative but the emotional progression when sequencing the EP, allowing the brightness of its opening to gradually give way to the heartbreak of its closing moments.
Even the title reflects that feeling.
‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ takes its name from a flower, with the image of a gate separating two people becoming a metaphor for a love that remains beautiful but just out of reach. To reach over it requires effort, just as maintaining a connection across distance, uncertainty and changing circumstances does.
Ultimately, Phoebe June isn’t interested in simply documenting her own heartbreak.
She wants listeners to recognise themselves in it.
‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ is a collection about love, nostalgia, hope and regret and about what remains when something beautiful ends up on the other side of the gate.
-
We Speak Music1 week agoPAULINO & THE GREAT ESCAPE BRING THE MUSIC OF JOURNEY TO MASSACHUSETTS FOR A DOUBLE-HEADER LABOR DAY WEEKEND
-
We Speak Country1 week agoTristan Roberson Bridges Country Tradition and Modern Ambition on Down For The Ride
-
We Speak Electronic1 week agoKIM KAY: THE BELGIAN POP STAR WHO REFUSES TO DISAPPEAR
-
We Speak Music1 week agoRising Star Soleil Shines in “Rubbish” Music Video