Scenic Route to Alaska - Lasts Forever
Self-Released
Released on April 12th, 2024
Let’s get one thing straight right off the jump: Scenic Route to Alaska might just be the most effortlessly likable denim-clad Canadian indie folk pop trio composed of childhood best friends ever formed to the east of the Rockies. And even if they aren’t (Half Moon Run are some stiff competition on the likability, if not the denim), Lasts Forever, the Edmonton group’s newest and most self-produced album to date, is a warm dose of nostalgia and camaraderie. Lasts Forever has that wide-open summer sky sound that thrives in the prairies. Trevor Mann’s vocals are honest, the lyrics vulnerable, and there is always a sense that Trevor, Shea Connor, and Murray Wood are three people you’d be lucky to have as friends.
Lasts Forever feels a bit like a high school reunion or a welcome-home party. It’s a good time, sure, but there’s a note of melancholy, a heaviness that runs under the free and easy exterior. Maybe it’s the worry most creatives, most people in general, can relate to, the voice whispering that you’re wasting time and falling behind. Or maybe it’s just the sound of a band that’s been making music together for over a decade taking some space to breathe and reflect. Whatever the reason, it’s a good change, a change that maybe owes something to the band’s larger degree of control over the production of this album. This is also the first time Scenic Route to Alaska has gone more than 2 years without releasing an album and it’s hard to believe that the 4-year break since 2020’s Time for Yourself didn’t have an impact on the production, not to mention how intense it must have been to write and record an album during these last 4 years.
All of that isn’t to say that Lasts Forever is a heavy album, honestly it balances its melancholy and hope with an easy confidence, a confidence that’s obvious in the album’s first two tracks. “Call it a Coincidence”, the surprisingly moody opener, features Mann waxing poetic on the passage of time and the strangeness of loss, over a languidly swirling haze of guitar—courtesy, I’m told, of Randy Bachman’s old Stratocaster and Neil Young’s 1958 amp, “Old Nasty”. It’s an interesting choice, the obvious opener would have been the next track and the album’s first single, “Lasts Forever”, the kind of upbeat indie rock banger destined for music festivals and brewery patios all over the country. But there’s a really nice symmetry to the tracks that bookend the album, the wistful longing of “Call it a Coincidence” looping through the earnest devotion of “Northern Lights”. Everything’s a mess, but Scenic Route to Alaska isn’t here to offer simple solutions to existential crises. Best they can do is an album packed with absolutely excellent music that celebrates life in all its highs and lows.
Now get your headphones on and go outside: you need some sun.
- Josiah Snell