We Speak Music
Vancouver Singer-Songwriter Todd Kowaluk Shares New Single ‘Enough Is Enough’
Vancouver singer-songwriter Todd Kowaluk has been working on his unique brand of indie folk for a number of years, using 90s-influenced indie rock and pop with a higher message since his debut EP Love Can Set Us Free.
He returns with his brand-new single ‘Enough Is Enough’. A track which he credits a significant degree of importance. For him, it represents a milestone in his life, musically, spiritually and career-wise. He had the catchy, Paul Westerberg-esque indie pop guitar riff back in the days of Love Can Set Us Free, but set it aside for when he cracked the conceptual code of the old adage ‘enough is enough’.
‘Enough Is Enough’ is a protest song with a storyteller’s perspective. It starts with that fatalistic phrase and turns it into a question and a call for people to be honest with their hearts, with each other, and with, well, infinity. If love can set us free why constantly test it with boundaries? The pondering of all these questions is set within the backward (chorus first) structure of the song and Kowaluk’s personal experience with his own questioning nature.
“For me, as a songwriter, the question I kept going back to was ‘how does this song end’? That questioning made me want to evolve the song somehow, Find a brighter ending, Hope for a new beginning, a higher version of myself. I wanted to be a better human being somehow and hopefully in the process a better songwriter.”
“There’s really not much traditional about this song, it starts with a chorus, and generally, songs don’t start with a chorus, It questions the rules and at the same time asks what is important about being human in this ever-changing world of ours. It’s a protest song.”
The track’s opening is a straightforward yet catchy acoustic guitar that combines elements of rock and pop with indie-folk flavor. A syncopated cadence is infused into the song by the kick-drum-driven beat, which enhances the vibrant auditory representation and overall feel.
Todd Kowaluk‘s vocals, which range from powerful savors to low-pitched, delicate timbres, are replete with a profoundly philosophical message about life in general and music in particular.
“People have asked me what motivates me to write and record music and I say I would like to have more of a voice in the world… and yet what I am discovering is that it has been more about finding my own voice and than using it to express what is important to me.”
Todd Kowaluk was lucky enough to gain favor and assistance from local Vancouver electronic music icon Dave King of longwalkshortdock for the production of ‘Enough Is Enough’. He credits Dave for gifting him with a timeline, which in turn gave him the motivation and push he needed to finish writing the song and take these next big yet delicate steps forward in his career.
Although he admits that he didn’t know where he was “going with this song” in the first verse, Todd Kowaluk’s years of stumbling in the dark searching for the right keys and lyrics with which to express his ceaseless yearning have delivered this captivating, complete work. It’s clear that even if he has not found the answers to all his questions, he has enticed others to ask these same questions with him, And in so doing… He has finally found his voice.
Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.
‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.
The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.
The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:
Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.”
About the track, Michele says, “I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.
We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.”
The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.
Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.
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