The new single from Plain Mister Smith is a love letter to Paris in summer, written after a post Olympic trip when the city had emptied out and the streets were all his.
The new single from the elusive Canadian multi-hyphenate arrives ahead of his sophomore album Bric-a-Brac attack, out July 24, and it came straight out of a post Olympic trip to the French capital. He wandered the quiet, sun drenched streets after the crowds had gone, and the track captures exactly that feeling. the warm, slightly delirious high of being somewhere beautiful with someone you love.
“With Dream Gigantic I tried to convey that sense of balmy exuberance that happens when it’s the height of summer,” he explains, “and whether you are in a bubbly Paris café or a park in Tokyo, the New York Subway or anywhere really, you’re having the time of your life with someone you love.“
Musically, it’s built around an upbeat acoustic drum section, lush keyboards and a groovy bassline. The real magic is in the vocals. Plain Mister Smith brings in two collaborators for a dual vocal dynamic: Findlay Brown, who lends his Americana folk sensibility, and JUNO Award-winner Krystle Dos Santos, whose soulful, jazz-inflected R&B texture pulls the whole thing somewhere richer and warmer. Together they turn what could’ve been a straightforward summer song into something more layered and cinematic.
Plain Mister Smith is a genuinely hard artist to pin down, and that’s clearly by design. He was once the guitarist for Canadian darkwave pioneers Moev, and he currently plays cello with the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra. His music under this moniker drifts between folk, pop and something more atmospheric—melancholy and melodic but unmistakably modern, sitting somewhere in the orbit of The Beatles, Leisure and Tame Impala. It’s earned him support from NPR Music, CLASH, NOTION, Under the Radar and plenty more, all while he’s kept his actual identity at arm’s length.
“Dream Gigantic” is the sixth single from Bric-a-Brac attack, and if it’s anything to go by, the album’s shaping up to be a warm, genre-blurring thing worth paying attention to.
Plain Mister Smith’s “Dream Gigantic,” featuring Findlay Brown and Krystle Dos Santos, is out June 26 via Amelia Records/Symphonic. The album Bric-a-Brac attack follows on July 24.
Listen to the premiere of “Dream Gigantic” below.
Image credit: Sandra Lockwood
