Status/Non-Status are back with “Mainly Crows”, an “observation on community,” says Adam Sturgeon. “Of how flashy lights and opportunities flush vibrant people from their humble homes. It’s about the death of the small town and the call to join the city mass. More than that, it is a tribute to friends and about travelling between worlds to see them along the way. It’s a song about how sorely they are missed and how we can’t really blame them for moving away.” 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.

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.

Status/Non-Status
Surely Travel
Track list

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

Status/Non-Status 2022 Tour Dates

Sep 23 – London, ON – Palasad Social Bowl
Sep 24 – Windsor, ON – Meteor
Sep 30 – Montreal, QC – Pop Montreal
Oct 6 – Brantford, ON –
Oct 8 – Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern
Oct 13-16 – Folk Music Ontario Conference

Pre order Surely Travel by Status/Non Status HERE