Last week Woodpigeon released a holiday song online. Not to be outdone, label-mate Christopher Smith has not only recorded a Christmas song himself, but has also made a video for it.

Smith and Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton are collaborating on 2 EPs to be released in 2010. Christopher Smith + The Beckon Call will also open Woodpigeon’s Vancouver CD release show on January 16th at the Biltmore in support of Die Stadt Muzikanten out earlier that week.

Smith’s debut album, The Beckon Call, will be released in the Spring of 2010. The Keepsake EP is available here, or through iTunes and emusic. While “Christmas Day” isn’t on either, you can download it free below along with the track Piece by Piece, from the Christopher Smith’s EP Keepsake.

• Downloads

• “Christmas Day” for Christmas
• “Piece by Piece” from Keepsake

Sourced from: Boompa

Woodpigeon

Genre: Indie-Pop

Calgary, AB

Sample Track: Love in The Time of Hopscotch

Recently voted onto the Polaris Prize Long List for their sophomoric album Treasury Library Canada on Boompa records, Woodpigeon was last years break through hidden treasure who garnered many accolades by making it onto many top 10 lists from last year.

Press Feedback

“Strings soar … and voices blend like a cool breeze hitting the ocean mist … Woodpigeon take flight with an ease that their name wouldn’t make you believe.” -EXCLAIM!

“A perfect balance of grandeur and intimacy, delight and melancholy. Treasury is a left-field gem … you can’t help but fall in love with.” -CHROMEWAVES

Mark Hamilton on Treasury Library Canada

Growing up in Canada, I remember flipping through the pages of those subscriber series of Encyclopedia Canadiana, wildlife picture books, and Disney collector storybook sets available at grocery stores and through mail order. I always begged my parents to subscribe, to get the monthly installments mailed directly to our house. I’d wait what felt like ages between issues – all read cover-to-cover upon arrival, of course, tossed onto the shelf and forgotten in the wait for the next package to arrive.

Diving back into those books as an adult and re-discovering just what waits inside behind dusty covers prompted the line of thinking behind the development of the songs on Treasury Library Canada. I didn’t want these songs to be forgotten, to end up on the shelf collecting dust. While a lot of them were written around the same time that we were working on our first record Songbook, they didn’t fit the overall story and feel, that I was going for with that record. But something kept them all together – a story started to emerge between the songs when left to their own devices.

We hit garage doors with drumsticks and test-ran every mellotron sound we could find. We chased new sounds and structures, throwing away entire arrangements to try it from another angle to see what would happen. As time went on into the recording, Treasury Library Canada felt more and more like a continuation of the diary composed on Songbook, but where Songbook told the story of my time living overseas – from happy arrival to admittedly bitter departure – Treasury Library Canada compiles the sounds of struggling with place.

We throw a lot of words around these days – everyone cusses; it seems saying “I love you” gets easier for folks all the time – but I’m always careful with the words I choose. “Love” only goes to those who deserve it. “Hope” never really dies, no matter how bad things may seem. And “home,” above all else, is only used correctly when it describes the place you’re meant to be. I’ve written a lot of songs attempting to figure that out for myself since moving back to Canada, re-experiencing our winters, driving across our vast expanses of prairie. Treasury Library Canada helped me figure out just what the words listed above – and “home” in particular – truly mean to me.