Carson McHone is back with a new video for “The Canvas,” the track is off the Merge recording artist’s LP Pentimento  and was shot in the desert in Far West Texas. McHone will be hitting the road next week, with Canadian artist Julie Doiron.

As well, this summer, McHone will bring Pentimento and the rest of her stunning catalog to the UK and EU for a string of headline dates, including a stop at the End of the Road festival. The tour will see her teaming with Max Kinghorn-Mills to build a touring ensemble featuring members of his own Hollow Hand Band, as well as three performances in which she, Kinghorn-Mills, and multi-disciplinary artist Fliss Horrocks will play as a trio

Carson McHone on “The Canvas” and Pentimento:

“We shot this on a 16mm Bolex. It’s the first thing we ever filmed on that camera and we had no idea if the footage would turn out – we were just improvising. The camera was missing an eye piece so we went to the Dollar General in town and cut the nipple off of a plunger (unused!), and taped it to the camera – most of the roll is just trying to figure out how to focus. The film then sat in the camera for five years and we forgot about it until it was unearthed and finally developed. When we finally saw it, it had this sort of beautifully organic awkwardness – I showed it to a friend, suggesting I might pull from it, and she said, “no way, you have to let it just play out as is!”, so that’s what you see. It’s footage from when Daniel and I first got together, and it’s from the time and place the song itself was written. In a way, it’s an artifact from the groundwork that became Pentimento.”

All of the songs of Pentimento began as poems against the backdrop of global crisis, national borders, civil unrest, birth, death, bad love, new love, true love. They were written in the desert during spring and summer. There, history and time are visual in the drama of great boulders, in layers on a rockface—the potential and past energy of the ancient sea-floor. Some of these lyrics were written on postcards and in letters. Others began as embellishments on watercolor paintings, or captions for a photograph in a diary, or were written as responses in the margins of a journal to a child, newborn, from a generation past. These “artifacts” from writing/living informed what would eventually become material for this record.

Later, beside the ocean, and during the first snow of the season, a special group of musicians gathered to bring the album to life. While half of the songs were built into place according to a rigorous “plan,” the other half came together for the first time on this very occasion and were learned and performed live on the spot. Over six days, all of it was captured on an 8-track cassette tape recorder, including fortuitous feedback bass drone, and spontaneous laughter.

Carson McHone
Pentimento
Merge Records

1. Winter Breaking
2. Abstract Spring
3. Downhill
4. Vision in the Verse
5. In the Summer the Streets Burned
6. Idiom
7. Fruits of My Tending
8. Forbidden Kiss
9. The Canvas
10. Lucentum
11. Wake You Well
12. Triumph of the Heart
13. September Song

Carson McHone 2026 tour dates

Jun 22 Windsor, ON – Meteor *
Jun 23 Kalamazoo, MI – Bell’s Eccentric Cafe *
Jun 24 Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle *
Jun 25 Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club *
Jun 26 Davenport, IA – Raccoon Motel *
Jun 27 Lawrence, KS – Bottleneck *
Jun 28 St. Louis, MO – The Sinkhole *
Jun 29 Nashville, TN – Cannery Hall *
Jul 02 Little Rock, AR – White Water Tavern +
Jul 07 Pioneertown, CA – Pappy & Harriet’s %
Jul 08 Los Angeles, CA – Permanent Records Roadhouse %
Jul 09 Ojai, CA – Ojai Deer Lodge %
Jul 10 San Francisco, CA – Kilowatt Bar %
Jul 11 Santa Cruz, CA – The Crepe Place %
Jul 13 Portland, OR – Turn! Turn! Turn!
Jul 15 Vancouver, BC – Green Auto
Jul 19 Dawson City, YT – Dawson City Music Festival
Jul 23 Edmonton, AB – The Aviary
Jul 27 Winnipeg, MB – Public Domain
Aug 25 London, UK – The Shacklewell Arms
Aug 27 Ermelo, NL – “In De Rimboe”
Aug 29 Twello, NL – Into the Mud 2026
Aug 30 Utrechrt, NL – Brewpub Kromme Haring
Sep 01 Guildford, UK – Star Inn
Sep 02 Sheffield, UK – Delicious Clam
Sep 03 Nottingham, UK – The Chapel Nottingham
Sep 04 Manchester, UK – Gulliver’s
Sep 05 – Tollard Royal, UK – End of the Road 2026
Sep 09 Nijmegen, NL – Thiemeloods
Sep 10 Groningen, NL – Vera

* w/ Julie Doiron
+ w/ Daniel Romano’s Outfit
% w/ PEARL CHARLES

Order Pentimento by Carson McHone HERE