Being from the middle of nowhere doesn’t necessarily mean you feel connected to nature in a way others don’t. On the contrary, people like Montreal-based musician Graham Steinman certainly seem to think about the natural world a lot more than I do, living out the Romantic-era awe of the natural world as a vehicle for the sublime.
His new album, migration’s only natural, flips the common metaphorical likening of modern life to natural cycles on its head by following “a kingfisher on its journey from northern coast to southern shore.” Steinman’s previous EPs — 2017’s Glass Orchards and 2022’s West Fox Island — are also a reflection of the environment, but migration’s only natural feels like a conscious collision of earth tones rather than a conjuring of its surroundings.
With contributions from the likes of Brontae Hunter and SHEBAD‘s Emil Grigoriadis White, Steinman pushes his craft forward beyond an imaginative folk-jazz mirroring and into active, boundless communion with ancient biospheric wisdom, pushing the boundaries of organicism to speak the language of an ever-shifting landscape.
To paraphrase Mary Oliver, he’s paying attention to a world far greater the inner lives we find ourselves endlessly getting caught up in, being astonished, and telling about it.
