Born in Vancouver to a Serbian family, and now splitting her time between Montreal, Toronto, and the UK, Singer/songwriter, Dana Gavanski has announced her debut album Yesterday Is Gone, will come out via Flemish Eye Records (NOV3L, Preoccupations)  on March 27. With the news, Gavanski has shared her new single “Good Instead of Bad”. “Often we have to go a little far in one direction to learn something about ourselves,” Dana says.

Dana reflects on her experiences that led her to writing her debut album and lead single “Good Instead of Bad”, “it’s about reflecting on the end of a relationship and how quickly things change,” she explains. “The desire to make up for everything that wasn’t done or wasn’t done right. The muddiness of breaking up, and not knowing if it’s the right decision. Not saying the right things, not being able to express the complexity of what we’re feeling. Things change and that’s that – not being able to turn back and undo a bad move. It’s an attempt to see from the other’s perspective and understand how hard it is for them as well. Reflecting on the intractability of certain decisions.”

By turns break-up album, project of curiosity, and, as Dana puts it, “a reckoning with myself”, Yesterday Is Gone is her attempt to “learn to say what I feel and feel what I say” – an album of longing and devotion to longing, and of the uncertainty that arises from learning about oneself, of pushing boundaries, falling hard, and getting back up.

The album took shape after she returned from a writing residency in Banff, Alberta. She’d begun to learn the art of empty time, of being alone with her emotions, losing herself in a landscape. She thought of Vashti Bunyan, riding in a horse and cart for hours and writing, writing, writing. She considered how she might use writing to make sense of her life after the tumults of a break-up and a new city. Adrift in Toronto, Dana struggled to feel at home and connected to people, but the solitude also allowed her to ground herself in writing. She kept office-style hours at her bedroom desk every day until she started to understand the writing process, to see that “transforming a burning desire into something clear and tangible is a vulnerable and delicate act. You have to be able to let things happen, to accept losing control.”

Dana Gavanski
Yesterday Is Gone
Flemish Eye Records

1 One By One
2 Catch
3 What We Had
4 Good Instead of Bad
5 Trouble
6 Yesterday Is Gone
7 Small Favours
8 Everything That Bleeds
9 Other Than
10 Memories of Winter

Dana Gavanski
Tour

Feb 19 – Nijmegen, NL – Stevenskerk %
Feb 20 – Antwerp, BE – De Roma %
Feb 21 – London, UK – Emmanuel Centre %
Feb 22 – Birmingham, UK – St Paul’s Church %
Feb 23 – Bristol, UK – St George’s %
Feb 25 – Leeds, UK – City Varieties %
Feb 26 – Glasgow, UK – Oran Mor %
Feb 27 – Belfast, UK – Ulster Sports Club %
Feb 28 – Dublin, IE – Liberty Hall %
Mar 1 – Folkestone, UK – Quarterhouse %
Mar 27 – Brighton, UK – Resident (in-store)
Mar 29 – Nottingham, UK – Rough Trade (in-store)
Apr 13 – Manchester, UK – Soup Kitchen
Apr 14 – Bristol, UK – Louisiana
Apr 15 – London, UK – Lexington
Apr 17 – Brussels, BE – Botanique
Apr 18 – Rotterdam, NL – Motel Mozaique
Apr 19 – Luxembourg, LUX – Rotonde
Apr 22 – Paris, FR – Pop Up Du Label
Sep 6 – UK – End of the Road festival

% – supporting Damien Jurado