Hillsburn’s 2021 full-length album Slipping Away earned the band three East Coast Music Award wins for the 2022 Album of the Year, Group Recording of the Year, and Pop Recording of the Year categories. On the tail of these wins, the band is set to start releasing new music from what will be a follow up EP titled Stories.

Recorded in Halifax and Dartmouth, NS with former bandmate Paul Aarntzen engineering the project, the EP sees band member Clayton Burrill stepping into the role of songwriter for the first time since the band formed in 2014.

The constant of change has, deliberately or not, been one of the driving forces of Halifax’s Hillsburn. From its early days as a harmony-heavy folk outfit to three albums spent evolving and expanding its full-band sound to its current iteration as an indie-pop four-piece, songcraft has been the steadfast centre of an often-shifting musical outlook. So what happens when the songwriter—founding member Paul Aarntzen—is no longer at the centre? You start moving parts around. 

The six tracks on Stories will certainly not scare off any existing Hillsburn fans—like Aarntzen, Burrill has a knack for scenes set in nature, universal observations that connect on an intimate level, masterworks of literature (in this case, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours), and highly shoutable refrains. On the opener “Truths You Outrun,” he recounts a lonely season spent “trying to mute my fear,” before realizing it wasn’t possible: “When your eyes close, you’re gonna feel it burn.” 

“Truths You Outrun” is slated for release on January 20, 2023 and is available via LHM Records.