All sales of this album will go towards CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, in Toronto, Canada.*


Special thanks to: Sarah Fairman, Daniel Fishbayn, Kyran Paul, Alex Huynh Do (Winnie), my family, Ryan Binhammer, Ashley Lowe, all the folks at The Imperial Musicians' Hangout, strangers who's voices I used without their consent when I recorded in the subway stations Eglinton, Sheppard, St. Andrew, and more, CAMH, The Spill Magazine, Exclaim! Magazine, and more.



You're Not Just A Body to Me, the follow-up album to my 2019 full length debut, Christmastown.

Christmastown ends on a note of retreat - of withdrawing into one's self. The most important, relevant lyric from that song comes at the end of the second verse:

"And the faces are ugly, and no one is young / I'm goin' home to be on my own for the month"

The folks on You're Not Just A Body to Me seek something else. It begins:

"Are you tired of off days? Waking up and feeling dread? And then the rope slips and you're weightless, sitting on the edge of your bed."

There has to be more to this feeling of depression, even if you can use it to fuel something good, like making art.

I read a review of Wilco's Summerteeth record recently. The author of the review (it was a retrospective) pointed something out that I think makes sense. It was a tough time for the band's songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, but because it's one of their best records people think feeling depressed and unhappy is what became the impetus for all this great material, but the reviewer suggests that the record is amazing not because of what the depression did to Tweedy, it's amazing because Tweedy made it DESPITE being depressed at the time. It's not a testament to depression as creative fuel, it's a testament to Tweedy's mental fortitude against something that from the outside seems insurmountable.

That is the kind of feeling I tried to bring to You're Not Just A Body to Me.

While You're Not Just A Body to Me deals with the issues depression and anxiety create, it also deals - thankfully - with a new found ability to weather those issues. They won't be solved, but it's understood that they will ebb and flow, and that's okay. The ability to handle those ebbs and flows is itself a version of a "win".

The album title, "You're Not Just A Body to Me", refers to a sense of self, developed from learning to deal with your internal issues, and also having a partner to lean on.

Often when I feel depressed or anxious, it puts me in a place where I want to do random (occasionally harmful) things because it dawns on me "I am just a body, so who cares". It's this sense of detachment that allows people to believe their lives are meaningless, making it that much easier to take their lives*.

That's why, for me, a title or message like "You're not just a body to me" means so much. It's a reminder that - from any outside perspective, a secondary part of yourself, a partner, your parent(s), your sibling(s) - you may feel a certain way, but your impact on other people could be and probably is something entirely different, and sometimes if you remind yourself of that, it provides enough of a push to make it through the episode.

Christmastown is an album about mental illness and there being no light. You're Not Just A Body to Me is a step forward into a space with some light, which stems from a variety of sources.

The subject in "Christmas Town" wants to go "home to be on my own for the month". The character(s) throughout You're Not Just A Body to Me have gained a little more mental fortitude, and seek a higher standard of living.

Put another way, they don't just want to survive, they want to live.