Luke Lalonde – The Perpetual Optimist

For the guy who leads one of Canada’s longest serving alternative rock bands the Born Ruffians, Luke Lalonde is somehow kept out of the spotlight as a solo artist. His 2012 solo debut Rhythymnals found him exploring more of the electro-indie side of things, and succeeding in the genre shift from indie folk-rock. Fast-forward seven years later, and his sophomore solo effort Perpetual Optimist sees Lalonde returning to the more folk-heavy, indie rock sound he is known for with the Born Ruffians. As the lead songwriter for the band, it’s refreshing to hear a more intimate and exclusive musical perspective.

Luke Lalonde (Photo courtesy of Paper Bag Records)

Ahead of the release, Lalonde shared a letter that he wrote that provides a window into his thought process and creative inspiration for the album:

“I was moving back to Toronto from New York and I found myself pulling into a cemetery. I just sort of ended up there. I frequently end up in cemeteries, where I’ll sit parked in my car or on a bench to jot some ideas down–lyrics, poems, drawings–surrounded by strangers in the dirt. I move a lot.

When I was a kid my grandfather, Charlie, would bring me to one cemetery in particular where he used to work as a teenager. I think it made him feel young. It reminded him of a carefree time. As counter intuitive as that may seem on the surface, it actually makes a lot of sense: You’re younger than pretty much anyone in there, and all of them are about as carefree as you can get. We would go and chat with the groundskeepers, drive around the plots, and he’d point out all the people he knew who were buried there. Charlie and June were my mother’s parents. Their lives were marked with more death than most would be able to handle. He and June are buried there now.

Now that I’m older, I travel a lot. In Germany, I saw row upon row of tombstone after tombstone marked with the same date of death. Reading the same date over and over can move you to tears. In some places there will just be a building stocked with innumerable small compartments, thousands of names on silver placards, much like a post office. Except instead of holding people’s flyers and junk mail, they have your mom, or your uncle Terry. One of those had a nice koi pond outside. Call me old fashioned but I still prefer a big park filled with coffins, at least aesthetically speaking.

Recently I’ve been worrying a lot. I think a lot of people have. There’s a lot of bad things happening out there. I worry mostly about the planet, and the animals living on it. I worry that we humans, so prone to consume and destroy, do more evil than good. I think our planet is God and she is attempting to buck us off now.

But I also worry about myself. I worry about the people I love, and about innumerable inane things throughout my day that eclipse the fact that we’re undergoing a mass extinction event. I don’t know if we’re equipped to comprehend an apocalypse that moves so slowly. Or maybe we’re all just wired with a firebrand optimism.

So as I sit surrounded by decaying corpses and summer skies, waiting for a muse, I’ve realized, that’s what the record is about, more or less. I sense we’re all bound for that eternal rest. My pen hovers above the page and I think about humanity in the 21st century, suspended on a wire in a hurricane.”

With that letter in mind, Perpetual Optimist sounds exactly how you would expect. Sincere, nostalgic, homegrown, and well…optimistic. Opening single “Waiting for the Light to Change” starts things off with a raspy, gritty production quality, but softens up with Lalonde’s familiar howl and melancholy lyrics.

The album plays through so smoothly, helping the listener get lost amongst the music, and second track “Poonchie” is a beautiful instrumental track that tethers into the lead single “Perpetual Optimist”. From the opening note escaping from Lalonde’s voice to the final chord strum, the song is everything a Born Ruffians fan wants and expects from the singer-songwriter. It hooks you in and takes you along for a sing-a-long journey. Plus, there is a wicked guitar solo that just takes the foot-stomping melody to another level.

When I use the word nostalgic to describe the album, I also mean Lalonde takes a page from the book of his musical ancestors, such as Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, taking care to play with the origins of folk music from the ‘60s and ‘70s on tracks like “Dusty Lime”, “Go Somewhere”, and “Not My Spiritual Guide”.

Of all the songs on the album that encompasses the theme of remaining optimistic in these uncertain times, “Two Minutes to Midnight” takes the cake. It makes you want to dance, sing-along, and frankly forget about the fact that we will all die one day. “Two Minutes to Midnight” boasts a ringing chorus of “one day you’re going to die, because you just do” over a foot-stomping harmonica melody and rock n’ roll energy. It makes you want to dance, laugh, cry, and smell the roses in its brief 2 minutes existence.

Perpetual Optimist is fun, meaningful, personal, and some of Lalonde’s best and most confident work to date. He is definitely one of Canada’s more underrated musicians and songwriters, but perhaps that’s for the best, meaning those of us that know his work can enjoy its sincerity and organic nature.