New Music: Alex Henry Foster – Springtime

Springtime is the first taste of The Fragile Beauty (Of New Morning Hopes), the upcoming album from Alex Henry Foster.

The Canadian musician, author, producer, and composer takes inspiration from the work of the late Palestinian poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish within the lyrics, drawing comparisons to the literal role of spring in nature and the use of it in many cultures as a metaphor within all aspects of life.

Foster has undergone his own personal spring: his creative and personal rebirth included the moment he died on the operating table when undergoing emergency heart surgery. He now spends time in the city of Tangier, which he has found personally transformative, and its impact can be heard within the arrangement and seen in the accompanying video.

There’s no mistaking that Foster has passion for music, life, and learning here. Springtime bursts forth with ideas and sounds, creating a kaleidoscope of colours and emotions, within a post-rock landscape, filigreed with Arabic influences that reflects an awareness of the relationship between life and death.

“Springtime reflects on the painful essence of having to look for initial signs of life when death seems to be lying underneath every aspect of the existential beauties we can’t truly embrace until we are ready to let go and willing to be transformed through its self-determining midst.

“I wrote that song in a cathartic period of my life, characterized by deep emotional turmoils, where I felt like I had to either choose to abandon myself in an uncontrollable stream of inner mutation or to remain in the stagnating status quo of my own declining demise.”

“The song echoes the late Palestinian poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish’s references about the metaphoric nature of spring as the juxtaposing struggle between our personal faith in the profound longing for intangible evolution and the collective desire to experience a palpable long-awaited rebirth,” explains Foster.

“[It] expresses Darwish’s resilient sentiment that hope is a brutal necessity to become the renewed vision we nurture in the face of desperation: ‘I will live, even if life betrays me, and I will dream, even if dreams abandon me.’”

For updates on The Fragile Beauty (Of New Morning Hopes), and details of a European tour this December, be sure to follow Alex Henry Foster on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.

Header image by Stephanie Bujold