Faith Healer

Faith Healer

The Hand That Fits The Glove

Mint

Faith Healer quietly crystallizes on their new album The Hand That Fits The Glove, reshaping their already approachable pop sound into something even more immediate and invigorating. With their 2017 album Try ;-), the duo of Jessica Jalbert and producer/multi-instrumentalist Renny Wilson began stripping away some of the ‘60s chamber pop influences that had informed the earliest Faith Healer material, and these eight new songs continue expanding outward in new directions. It’s a multicolored assortment of richly detailed songwriting that feels surprisingly straightforward, knowingly concealing its complexities always just beneath a sheen of composed cool. The evolution that brought Faith Healer to this point has been ongoing since the project’s earliest days. Jalbert and Wilson had been working together since the time when Jalbert was still performing under her own name in the early 2010’s, transitioning to the Faith Healer moniker on 2015 album Cosmic Troubles and their creative partnership truly solidifying with Try ;-). Those albums were built from the ground up with an insular design, with sole contributors Jalbert and Wilson adding overdubs and sculpting the sound. The core Faith Healer duo expands their membership for the first time on The Hand That Fits The Glove, inviting additional musicians into the picture and filling out the sound with a live band feel. Players from various intersections of Canada’s indie circles played on the album, including contributions from longtime Faith Healer collaborators like Jenni Roberts (who’s also done some time as a touring musician on runs with TOPS...

Faith Healer

Try ;-)

Mint

When Edmonton’s Jessica Jalbert first began performing solo under the name Faith Healer, the alias was her way of avoiding being pigeonholed as a singer-songwriter. Now, however, times have changed: Faith Healer has blossomed into a band, with singer-guitarist Jalbert joined by drummer / multi-instrumentalist Renny Wilson and their first album as a duo is Try ;-). The follow-up to 2015’s Cosmic Troubles was largely recorded during an intensive month-long session in September 2016 at Wilson’s personal studio in Montreal. During the process, Jalbert rented a room in Wilson’s house and the pair spent hours jamming and listening to bargain bin rock records in the basement. The resultant pop-rock arrangements are overflowing with beautiful sonic details—from the Twin Peaks synths that enshroud “Sterling Silver” to the funky clavinet nestled within the paisley-patterned pop of “& Waiting.” Jalbert and Wilson were also inspired by the garage-punk snarl of Wipers, the deadpan drama of Leonard Cohen’s Death Of A Ladies’ Man, and the classic songwriting chops of Scott Walker and Elvis Costello. The intensive creative process of making this album inspired the title and serves as a reminder that sometimes you need to grab life by the horns rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. As for that winky face: “I always use that winky emoticon,” Jalbert says with a laugh. “I think it’s hilarious. I think it’s cheeky and fun, which is something I was trying to access a little more with this record.” Balancing melancholy lyrics with playful moods, lush...

Faith Healer

Cosmic Troubles

Mint

Long before Jessica Jalbert began recording under the Faith Healer moniker, she fostered a tight collaborative friendship with fellow Edmonton-bred polymath Renny Wilson. They’ve made boppy garage rock in Tee-Tahs, kicked up a racket in Punk Explosion, and even played in a smattering of cover bands. In 2011, Wilson was a key contributor to Jalbert’s solo album Brother Loyola. So when Jalbert set about creating her first album as Faith Healer, she naturally called on her old buddy to help out. The result of these productive sessions is the debut LP Cosmic Troubles. Jalbert wrote this material while absorbing a steady diet of psychedelic rock from the ’60s and ’70s. This fixation translates into inventive songs that combine the sun-kissed sparkle of classic pop harmonies with head-swimming trippiness and forays into thundering fuzz. She and Wilson played all of the instruments themselves, with the latter also handling production duties.  Cosmic Troubles captures the warmth of the Summer of Love along with an eclectic sense of anything-goes adventurousness. Opener “Acid” finds Jalbert renouncing hallucinogens after a bad trip, but the wah-laced fretwork suggests that she might still be feeling some of the drug’s after-effects. “Canonized,” on the other hand, swaps out woozy psych for speaker-assaulting distortion, its titanic chorus sounding like a long-lost hit from the grunge generation. Expanding the palette even further, the blissfully airy hooks of “Until the World Lets Me Go” are bathed in watery guitar jangle, while “Angel Eyes” begins with pensive pastoral plucking before unexpectedly...