Earlier this year Stewart Legere released Quiet the Station. A veteran of the Halifax arts scene, Legere blew us away with his debut solo album. This week he’s released ‘When I Was The King’ the first video since the album came out in April.
The album itself comes with some instant hooks – like ‘Dig Into The Dirt’, ‘Please Say’ and ‘Carry The River’ while songs like ‘Rover’ and ‘When I Was The King’ fill in the gaps with some slow burns that has made Quiet The Station worth revisiting if it weren’t already a permanent fixture in my car stereo. At this point Legere could play his songs over a tennis match and we’d still watch.
This is the second video Legere has released with Analog Songs. An early version of ‘Dig Into The Dirt,’ which also appears on the album, was released back in 2012.
‘When I Was The King’ features a 4th dimensionally challenged single-shot video of Legere having a romantic date for one in a super exclusive pop-up wine bar in an old warehouse garage. It’s probably the trendiest thing in Halifax right now, has a wait list for the next two years except that nobody knows the location and Legere has reserved all the spots anyway.
Halifax legend Kim Harris weaves in and out of the video, just as her voice does on the track, while Legere runs a gamut of emotions. We can never really tell if he’s truly alone in this situation. Aside from his constant companion of the solitary wine bottle he often seems to be conversing mostly with himself as he alternates between anger and mania.
“But I shoulda left you long before I met you
I shoulda seen and known
I shoulda known by the way you acted when you said
wanna come home?”
Legere teases a deeper story with the lyrics, and gives us only glimpses with the video. It’s not an invitation, but a peep show, enough for us to guess and fill in the blanks with our imaginations.