Hamilton folk duo Michael Antelope look back on their formative years with warmth and clarity on Calls Out The Window, a harmony-rich debut album featuring the joyful focus track “The Falconer.”
Hamilton, Ontario folk duo Michael Antelope have released their debut album, Calls Out The Window, a reflective collection shaped by youth, friendship, changing relationships and the landscapes that surrounded the pair as they grew into their songwriting partnership.
Made up of Doug McBrien and Lenny McGowan, Michael Antelope trace many of the album’s songs back to their teens and early twenties, when writing happened instinctively after school, between rehearsals and late into the night.
“It’s a reflection of a period in time when we were younger and going through all the things you experience in your teen years and early 20s,” the duo explain. “There’s a general sense of joy that comes through when we play together, even when the themes are more melancholic.”
That interplay between nostalgia and joy runs throughout Calls Out The Window. Recorded across Gold Standard Recorders and Dwayne Gretzky Studios, the album was captured over three days with a live-off-the-floor approach that placed McBrien and McGowan across from one another, preserving the chemistry at the heart of their performances.
Focus track “The Falconer” takes that intimate songwriting into more metaphorical territory. Inspired by McGowan’s time working at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage, the song draws from the story of Tony Hawk, a falcon used to deter geese from the venue grounds.
“Being a falconer is a very difficult profession,” McGowan says. “One day, they can decide to fly away and not come back.”
That uncertainty becomes the song’s emotional center, transforming the relationship between falconer and bird into a meditation on control, attachment and accepting that some things cannot be held forever.
Drawing inspiration from The Milk Carton Kids, Gillian Welch and Watchhouse, Michael Antelope pair intricate flatpicking and close harmonies with storytelling deeply connected to Ontario and the natural world.
With Calls Out The Window, the duo turn their earliest creative years into something tangible: a warm debut about remembering where you came from without trying to remain there.
FOLLOW MICHAEL ANTELOPE ON SOCIALS:
FACEBOOK • INSTAGRAM • TIKTOK • BANDCAMP • WEBSITE • YOUTUBE • SPOTIFY • APPLE MUSIC