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For the two years leading up to the release of Ghostkeeper’s 2017 album, Sheer Blouse Buffalo Knocks, Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle spent hours in their Calgary home studio sculpting sounds and working out the details of this which was undoubtedly the band’s most ambitious album.

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Part of it was pragmatic. The couple’s son was four at the time, so it made sense to stay close to home. Given the scale of the album, it was also easier and cheaper to spend hours experimenting in a home studio. But, beyond that, its very composition required advance planning. Sheer Blouse Buffalo Knocks is a concept album that revolves around a complex and dystopian tale about a spiritualist and a warrior who wage war against the environmental destruction of their communities in northern Alberta.

“We’ve been working on this last disc,” says Ghostkeeper. “With all the parts – changing parts, changing tempos – it was this concept of patchwork that we used to do a lot in the early days. It took a lot of rehearsals before we could lay the pieces down. We spent two years on this disc.

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So the fact that the band spent 15 days – five in the studio, a five-day break to write and regroup, plus another five days in the studio – recording its sequel, Multidimensional Culture, suggests a very different approach, even if part of this was again dictated by circumstances: they received a grant with deadlines to meet.

“We only had two songs finished,” says Ghostkeeper. “So we had a few months to write this record. This is definitely our most immediate record.

That’s not to say it didn’t require some serious work. It was just a little more focused.

Ghostkeeper – which also features drummer Eric Hamelin and bassist/multi-instrumentalist Ryan Bourne – traveled to OCL Studios outside of Calgary for sessions with producer Lorrie Matheson. Ghostkeeper and Houle took care of their two children and stayed at the studio residence.

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“We worked from 10 a.m.,” says Ghostkeeper. “Lorrie would show up and he would leave around 6 or 7 and we would continue to jam and work on our arrangements until midnight for five days straight. So it was really immersive. It was a great way to work, a great way to make a record. Your bed is just a few steps away.

But while Multidimensional Culture may not have been crafted with the same degree of premeditation, the 10 titles still feature a wide range of influences. Ghostkeeper says that writing and recording with time limits forced him to scale down some of his guitar parts, which are known to feature tricky flourishes and shifting time signatures. But the music is always rich. The instrumental interplay on the opening Doo Wop recalls The Band’s inspired musical synergy and delivers one of Ghostkeeper’s most soulful and direct vocal performances. Grassy Plains, the album’s lead single, is lean, angular post-punk with new wave synths. Violinist Jesse Zubot was asked to add some strings to the beautiful ballad Summer Child. Ghost on A Rope, which was one of the many tracks written during those five days of hiatus between sessions, allowed Houle to deliver a fairly straightforward and endearing pop guitar gem.

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While there’s no unifying dystopian tale to tie the songs together, the lyrics are still complex and sometimes haunting. This is especially true when Ghostkeeper tackles the issues of modern Native life. He sings the anthem This is How I Know You, which evokes missing Indigenous women and Truth and Reconciliation, with a moving, flickering falsetto that makes lines such as “the world is dangerous, you wore a dress” all the more heartbreaking. of summer”. .

Ghostkeeper also mentions Truth and Reconciliation in The Trees, which on the face of it appears to be a plea for unity and a desire to escape the COVID-era “Trumpism, nationalism and conspiracy theories”.

“It’s been a wild ride the past two years, just realizing how complex and disappointing things have become,” says Ghostkeeper. “So it’s about yearning to get away from it all.”

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But it also addresses what Ghostkeeper sees as resentment by some over the country’s attempts to address past injustices against Indigenous peoples and the devastating legacies of residential schools and other colonial policies.

“There was so much backlash,” he says. “Maybe not portrayed in the media, but I met many white men, in particular, who felt attacked because of Truth and Reconciliation and who felt sorry for themselves. They didn’t want to face the truth about what had happened. They didn’t want to deal with the fact that genocide had happened and residential schools had happened and (they think) that the native people should just suck it up and no light should be shed on that. You get so much with white people who were in my community through work.

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Ghostkeeper’s father is Métis and his mother has Cree and Saulteaux heritage. He grew up in High Level, Alberta, but spent much of his childhood at the Métis settlement of Paddle Prairie, where he met Houle. He often listened to his grandfather sing traditional Cree music. He began attending Aboriginal ceremonies as a teenager.

Both Houle and Ghostkeeper were exposed to different types of music in the village, ranging from traditional Cree music and Métis fiddle music to country and western music. Ghostkeeper is currently working on a solo record which he says is at least partially inspired by a desire to provide his family with the kind of country music they love.

Musical elements from indigenous traditions tend to seep into his music almost unconsciously. While he admires trailblazing artists like Tribe Called Red and others who put those influences directly into songs, Ghostkeeper says he takes a more subtle approach.

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“It’s right there in me,” he says. I tend to gravitate towards those types of melodies in powwow songs and round dance songs. I think these melodies are inside me and naturally fall outside of me. However, I want to evolve it to modern times. I don’t want to completely sing round dance songs or powwow songs and stick them into my songs. I prefer to add more and make it evolve.

The album takes its name from the song Ancestral, which addresses Indigenous spirituality that informs many of the collection’s overarching themes of existence and identity.

“It’s about recognizing and shuttling with other entities that exist among us in a different realm,” he says. “It’s always been so beautiful and miraculous and amazing to me growing up. That’s what he’s referring to: life is multi-dimensional and the idea of ​​holding that in my mind as I navigate this life is something thing that I want to remember. That there is power there and a lot of wisdom in our native heritage, native ways of spirituality. This song and this title (is) about honoring and giving thanks to this spiritual idea and this connection that I received from my ancestors.

Multidimensional Culture releases May 27. Ghostkeeper is playing The Palomino Smokehouse in June. 3.