OUT SEPT 8th 2023

What nefarious forces drive us to leave? Which benevolent souls guide us home? These are the questions buried deep in the heart of Skylines, the debut solo album by Montreal-based singer-songwriter Patrick Krief.

Produced by Patrick Krief and by Marcus Paquin (The National, The Weather Station, Arcade Fire) and featuring contributions from Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson, TEKE::TEKE), Erika Angell (Thus Owls), Liam O’neill (Suuns), and Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, R.E.M), Skylines is an exploration of place, purpose — of belonging and diaspora.

Told through the eyes of a first generation Canadian and a first-time father, Skylines explores Krief's immigrant tale. It's a story that begins in Morocco in the 1960s, when Krief's parents were forced to flee Casablanca in the face of abuse and discrimination. Settling in an underprivileged enclave of Montreal, they arrived at their new life only to discover the Canadian dream was fraught with its own toxic nightmares.

Across the album’s 12 tracks, Krief reflects echoes of this tale over lush musical landscapes, each crisply woven into a tapestry of expertly conceived and beautifully expressed baroque songcraft.

From the heartbeat that welcomes opening number ‘Let It Go,’ through the ear worms of ‘Eloise’ and ‘Hard Luck’ to the bolero march of ‘Chiburi,’ the otherworldly ‘Mishima,’ and the titular lullaby, Skylines is a showcase of Krief’s robust musical prowess. Here, moments of intense intimacy which summon the specters of George Harrison, John Lennon and Leonard Cohen can at once give way to grand atmospherics, effortlessly conjuring the elemental thunder of Joshua Tree era U2 or the sweeping strings of an Ennio Morricone score.

“I’ve been doing a lot of production work lately and that really informed the way I arranged this record,” explains Krief. “Every instrument is there to serve a compositional purpose”

A veteran of the Montreal music scene, Patrick Krief has been professionally releasing music for nearly two decades, first as a member of The Dears then via his own projects including Black Diamond Bay and, most recently, Krief.

When this suite of songs began emerging, however, they exposed a more mature and deeply personal vein than anything Krief had done before. As he began exploring that level of transparency, it felt only natural to make Skylines the first release under his own name.

“I wanted it to be about the person, not an idea,” he says. “I’m putting myself out there in a way I haven’t before. I’m hoping to have a more direct connection to the listener on a personal level”

In particular, Krief discovered a deep connection with the theme of being caught between two worlds. A reaction imbued with generational trauma brought on by his parents being forced to flee Morocco.

“That's something that I always carried with me,” he says. “Growing up, I always believed that when things got bad there was always a better place to run to.”

This sentiment manifests throughout the album, rendered most clearly on tracks such as “Let It Go,” “Light Eyes,” and “Eloise,” in which our protagonist considers how life could have been different had he not cut and run.

While on “Hard Luck,” “Get Even” and the propulsive “Ten Steps,” Krief addresses the growth and accountability that results from staying and fighting. Taking this concern to its extreme on the dramatic, shapeshifting “Chiburi,” in which the metaphor of removing blood from a sword reflects the weight of anxiety brought on by a society driven mad by political extremism.

For all its weighty subject matter, however, it’s worth noting that Skylines is ultimately an album filled with hope and serenity in the face of a chaotic world. Of looking at the darkness and seeing the possibility of light.

These unguarded moments play out across the album, in the vulnerability of ”Damned,” the brazen love laid bare of the touching “Alone,” and, perhaps most tellingly, on the album’s title track — a polemic of delicate beauty which fittingly epitomizes the album’s core message.

“It’s ultimately about connection,” Krief explains. “The title is intended to evoke the feeling of laying on your back and looking up at the sky.

“To me there is a calming quality in knowing, whatever your circumstances, you can be anywhere and escape into the same sky”