Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Leif Vollebekk has announced new album, Revelation, to be released on September 27, 2024 on Secret City Records, with single “Moondog”out now. It marks his third release on the Montreal-based label. Dates for his fall 2024 European headline tour have also been announced.
The 11 tracks on Vollebekk’s Revelation combine narrative lyrics and many one-take lead vocal performances. Vollebekk’s songwriting process was inspired by an exploration that began with Carl Jung and The I Ching, and continued into “the science of alchemy and the mystery of the divine.” The album addresses “themes of nature — water, astral constellations, mortality” as well as “the search for a higher power.”
“Moondog,” the first single, is a “meditation on love”. The video accompanying the song was directed by longtime collaborator Kaveh Nabatian and was filmed in Norway.
Vollebekk says:
During the pandemic lockdown, I was drawn to biographies and books about science. I guess I was looking for something to ground me. When I read Carl Jung’s ‘Dreams, Memories, Reflections,’ I was taken aback that he wrote so freely of having premonitions in his dreams and by his fascination with alchemy. When I read about Isaac Newton’s life, I discovered that this man of science secretly practiced alchemy in his own laboratory and looked for signs of the apocalypse. The more I read, the more otherworldly all these great scientists were. Dmitri Mendeleev said his breakthrough for the arrangement of the elements came to him in a dream. Is it really that different from Paul McCartney hearing ‘Yesterday’ in a dream?
The album was recorded at both Sunset Sound and Dreamland in Woodstock, New York. Vollebekk self-produced and played piano, guitar, bass, B3 organ, harmonica, accordion and Moog synthesizer on Revelation, and his collaborators included legendary drummer Jim Keltner, steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar (Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Rod Stewart), and bassist Shahzad Ismaily. His other album collaborators included artists Angie McMahon and Anaïs Mitchell on background vocals.
