Surely Travel, the newest album by Status/Non-Status, the evolving musical project of the Anishinaabe artist and community worker, and a close-knit group of collaborators. Status / Non-Status’ previous album Warrior Down was long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize and was shortlisted for the 2022 SOCAN Songwriter Prize for album track “Find A Home”, recently, Sturgeon joined Zoon’s Daniel Monkman to form OMBIIGIZI whose debut album, Sewn Together, was shortlisted for the 2022 Polaris Music Prize.

Today, Status/Non-Status are sharing the new single, “Mashkiki Sunset” which arrives complete with a video from director Sarah Houle (of Ghostkeeper). “Mashkiki is the Anishinaabe word for medicine and this song serves as a dedication to love, one of our 7 sacred teachings,” says Sturgeon.

“Mashkiki Sunset” is the first single from Surely Travel, “a record about being trapped in a van, watching life pass by through a foggy windshield,” says Sturgeon. “While often pulled far from home, I will picture myself a bird, flying home on a beautiful sunset atop the back of my dear old van.”

Status/Non-Status
Surely Travel
Tracklist

01 Blown Tire
02 Has It Been So Long
03 Mashkiki Sunset
04 Mainly Crows
05 Bineshiinh
06 Travelogue
07 When They Were
08 What Am I To Do
09 North Adelaide
10 Surely Travel

Recorded over 10 days at Deadpan Studios in Sudbury, the goal was to chisel things down down to the bone. Where past records built atmosphere out of heavy swaths of sound, overlaid with harmonies, the band opted for a single vocal take, a Wurlitzer, and ran a $100 classical guitar through an amp. Written in the company of others, whether from the back of a van, or with a baby on the other side of the door, Sturgeon wrote sections of the record in near silence — whispered lyrics and muted bass riffs that started as lullabies, only to be blown out later. It interlaces the album’s material composition with its central inspiration: the allure of touring from coast to coast, and the reality of over-indexing on time spent in an unreliable, stuffy van; the wrenching sacrifice of time away from loved ones, in favour of only seeing a gas station and vacant roads for hours on end.

Pre order Surely Travel by Status/Non-status HERE