There’s a disarming, gentle power to Jesse Northey’s songcraft. The Toronto-based musical polymath has spent a decade and a half honing his skills at writing just-right pop songs that distill a world of feeling into a few choice lines. Invoking George Harrison’s songwriting, Aimee Mann’s wit, and Andy Shauf’s soothing precision, Northey’s warm, mellow songs deconstruct the artifice of masculinity and paint humanistic portraits of those around him. You can hear Northey’s dedication to capital “P” pop across his solo debut, Onion Knight, produced by Thomas D’Arcy (The Sheepdogs, NOBRO).
Jesse Northey’s current project blossomed out of his decades of experience across the Canadian musical landscape. Over the years, Northey has contributed in countless ways: as an artist manager, label manager, studio engineer (he’s got a degree in Digital Audio Arts), producer—and, at the centre of it all, his work as a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter. Leading the band Jesse & the Dandelions for a solid decade, Northey toured from Alberta to Japan, sharing stages with Hollerado, Said the Whale, and July Talk along the way. Northey’s on the prestigious High Priestess Publishing roster, which has led to songs appearing in far-flung places such as the Jesse Moss documentary Mayor Pete, and Netflix’s “My Life With The Walter Boys”. As the head of Victory Pool, a record label and management company, Northey currently supports an impressive variety of acts, including Ghostkeeper, The Deep Dark Woods, MOONRIIVR, and Lauren Dillen. “I do better when switching focus all the time,” Northey explains. Northey’s earnest passion has driven him to tend to a vibrant community of the most impactful musicians in the game.
Grounded in his melodic approach to the piano, Jesse Northey’s new single, “Do I Belong?” is an open-hearted ode in what can feel like an increasingly closed-off, individualistic world. Northey ponders the paradoxes of friendship (“All the friends in the world, still don’t belong”) and embarks on a delicate dance of change and growth (“How will you know that it’s me?”), only to return to the titular question that started the journey. Playfully sincere, “Do I Belong?” stops you in your tracks to consider your place in the world.
Mixed by Jesse Turnbull, and recorded in Northey’s home studio, the latest single sounds like a warm hug: the fuzzy feeling invoked by the truly spiritual sides of religion, with none of the baggage. There’s a divine balance of instrumentation, as Northey homing in on precisely what is needed in every verse, every phrase: some congas here, a 70s guitar lick there (courtesy of Edmonton-born, LA-based songsmith Michael Rault), and gently melodic piano chords guiding you throughout.
The video for “Do I Belong?” captures the song’s universalist spirit with playful reverence. A tongue-in-cheek riff on Northey’s childhood memories of being a church youth leader and listening to his mom playing hymns on an organ, the video sees Northey and his musical buddies play hippie preachers, jamming out in the sanctuary like it’s 1969.
