Boniface [Red LP]

The self-titled debut from Canadian solo artist Boniface is a catalogue of their most formative coming-of-age experiences - each moment captured in diary-like detail and set against a magnificently sprawling backdrop. Throughout the album, the musician/producer otherwise known as Micah Visser reflects on falling in love and facing heartbreak whilst struggling with identity, never failing to find an ineffable beauty within all the pain. The result is a body of work both bracingly honest and powerfully exhilarating. Growing up in Winnipeg, Visser wrote the songs for the album at home throughout their late teens and early twenties, after shifts at the local coffee shop and lost nights in the city. This intimacy has been preserved on Boniface, the songs largely recorded in the room they were written, and with Visser's brother Joey and longtime collaborator Micheal Dunn also on hand. After the addition of bassist Carter Dawson, Visser eventually travelled to London to finish up work on the LP with producer/engineer Neil Comber (Charli XCX, M.I.A., Glass Animals) who helped bring Boniface's lavish arrangements to full and dazzling life.