F&M Release New Album This Fall

EDMONTON’S F&M
RELEASE SINCERELY, F&M
on NOVEMBER 12th

“F&M have just reminded us what finely crafted adult pop is all about
– not in the schmaltzy easy-listening radio sense, not in the big power
notes and diva personalities of mainstream contemporary music, but
in the thoughtful, emotional power of true musical storytelling.”
The Edmonton Journal

Toronto, ON – August 30, 2010 – In careful hands, silence can be as revelatory as the sharpest lyric and as significant as any note or beat in a song. Silence doesn’t often find itself a home in rock, pop, and folk, but over the course of their first two records, F&M gently courted it, and with the release of their third album, Sincerely, F&M, it has become part of the family.

Rebecca and Ryan Anderson, the songwriting couple at the heart of the Edmonton based band, transform silence into a versatile and eloquent instrument: it haunts the spaces between her sparkling piano lines and tugs at the edges of her accordion’s nostalgic wheeze; it charges the gaps in his guitar attacks with a crackling tension and animates the percussive skeleton and melodic flesh contributed by the rest of the band. It throws the interplay of their voices into high relief – Rebecca’s ringing with the delicate clarity of glass and lace; Ryan’s possessed by the spirits of rough wool and campfire smoke.

Those dynamics define the signature sound on Sincerely, F&M: a loping, spare orchestral folk stretched over a rock-pop backbone, waves of darkness and density crashing against brightness and space: music that’s reflective, emotive across a grand scale, and fearlessly hungry for meaning.

Sincerely, F&M began with a literal change of scenery, a palette-cleanser after the first two records, as the songwriters temporarily swapped the big Alberta sky for a seaside idyll of creation in Victoria, BC. Rebecca and Ryan’s ocean pilgrimage is enshrined in Sincerely, F&M, from the city’s name crowning the third track to the liner note wine pairings chosen by erstwhile bandmate/sommelier Brian Epp – a tribute to the couple’s songwriting lubricant of choice on the coast.

Back in Edmonton, they laboured in The Rhythm Egg studio to bring the album to life. Sincerely, F&M revisits the themes of the first two records and deepens the band’s explorations of the flickering contours of modern adulthood, with its moral reckonings and existential struggle. The songs are not simply about navigating joy and anguish, but also attention, contemplation, and devotion – an argument for substance and discovery, an overt rebellion against a billboard-and-sound bite world.

Stay tuned for tour dates this coming fall.

Track listing for Sincerely, F&M

1. Lovely, Lovely
2. I Tripped, You Smiled
3. Victoria
4. Fame
5. Bell’s Own Desire
6. The Singer Gets It Right
7. Swan Song Serenade
8. The Bent Mast
9. Maybe Tomorrow
10. This Winter Revisited
11. Walk To You
12. A Little Love Hymn