Despite the unknown cold snaps, seasonal affective disorders, and other come-what-mays that usher in the first dark days of winter, City and Colour’s sixth LP, A Pill for Loneliness, was a dose of insight for our changing times.

From the opening Fruit-Rollup licks and spacey riffs of “Living with Lightning” and the apocalyptic parade into a “Difficult Love” to the uncanny keys that prop up “Lay Me Down,” the album, released in October 2019, offers 53 minutes of Dallas Green’s company.

“It’s about trying to find a way in this clouded 24/7, 365-day-a-year world where you don’t need to shut things off if you don’t want to,” Green says of the album, speaking to BeatRoute shortly after the album’s release. “It’s nice to be with just your thoughts sometimes,” he says.

Despite Green’s high profile and success, he still squares with those original intentions from his Sometimes years.

“When I first started writing, I realized I could write to get myself out of my own head and into a melody, and then maybe into a song that somebody else might be able to take something from,” he reflects on his early days. “That’s all I have ever wanted and still want to do. And whether it led me to where it led me today, or it led me to just singing and playing in coffee shops in St. Catherines, I would still be doing it.”

This article originally appeared in the print edition of BeatRoute in October 2019.