Pretty Archie’s latest single, “Familiar Feeling,” is a subtle reminder that no matter how in love you may be, there’s nothing that can guarantee your relationship won’t suffer from the occasional coywolf turning over your picnic.
Relationships are complicated. Life is complicated. Relationships complicate life and metaphors complicate everything, but Pretty Archie might be serious about the coywolves. The band have worked them in as a major theme on their upcoming self-titled album, utilizing the hybrid coyotes/wolves as a Cape Breton twist on the traditional wolf imagery found rampant in Americana.
“There’s some myth to it, but they say that the ‘eastern coyotes’ that are found in Cape Breton Highlands Park are actually coywolves,” says Colin Gillis, harmonica player, bassist and back vocalist for Pretty Archie, as well as the key lyricist for “Familiar Feeling.”
Produced by Mark Howard (Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, The Tragically Hip, etc. etc. etc…) the song was written by Gillis during Quarantine v1.0 and fine-tuned by Pretty Archie’s frontman, Brian Cathcart before the whole thing was arranged and polished off together as a group.
”Familiar Feeling’ is a song that looks at the dynamics of a long relationship. The ups and downs of a relationship can simultaneously cause deep love and drive each other mad.” laughs Gillis. “Ultimately, love has a way of working itself out and that familiar feeling ends up finding a way.
“We recorded it with Mark Howard (who has got a ton of wild credits) last February. He came to Cape Breton and we rented an A-frame on Bras d’Or Lake and recorded it all there. We are super happy with how it all turned out.”
Gillis points out that the song isn’t necessarily an autobiographical one, but he’s seen it play out enough times with some of his closest friends to get the gist of the story.
“You end up learning a lot about those types of feelings when hearing both sides to the story from a couple going through these types of ups and downs and indecision,” says Gillis. “Sometimes it works out [and] sometimes it works out to be more of a delay or kick the can down the road. Ultimately, love usually wins those battles.”
So where do the coywolves come in?
Alison Uhma is a Cape Breton-based artist that Pretty Archie has taken a shining to. Her work is gracing the band’s upcoming album cover and features two coywolves, meant to represent the raw emotional nature of these songs and the picnic representing the peaceful buffet of Americana/Country that’s they’re going to make a mess of.
“She does a lot of really cool stuff,” says Gillis. “Her style was kinda what we were looking for, so we reached out and asked if she wanted to put something together. We sent her some tunes and she came back with this coywolf idea.”
The coywolves have since spilled over into the rest of the album, with the unfortunate fate of a pair of red boots gracing the artwork for the single.
“[They belong to] whoever had set up that romantic picnic and then had to bail quick when those coywolves came by for some pie and wine,” laughs Gillis. “No time for boots in a wildlife encounter like that.”
We’d rather not question just how much of a problem coywolves are around Cape Breton. Metaphorically, they’re everywhere but they’re not about to stop anyone from planning a romantic picnic.
Pretty Archies’s upcoming self-titled album will be available everywhere on January 21, 2022.