Jason Bajada
Crushed Grapes
Friday, September 23, 2022

“Crushed Grapes was written over several years. I wrote the first songs as I was coming out of a dark period, still feeling sore. Then wrote the next ones while relearning to walk with a spring in my step, each song helping me get further away from the abyss. To me, this album is about learning to slow dance with melancholy. During a four-month exile in California, I read John Fante’s Ask the Dust (he was Charles Bukowski’s favourite author) and I came upon this amazing metaphor: ‘[…] her eyes looked like crushed grapes.’ Fante’s poetry played a major part in the writing of my album’s title song. After crying every tear, your river eventually runs dry. Transformed. Wiser. Lighter. A calm after the storm,” says Bajada.

Featuring some of what has established him as an artist who can be frank and straightforward in an almost soothing way, this new nine-track album offers a contemplative appreciation of the places where life takes us. Written in New York, Montreal, the Magdalen Islands and Los Angeles, the LP was co-produced with Connor Seidel (Charlotte Cardin, Elliot Maginot, Matt Holubowski, 1969 Collective), with whom Bajada connected. Crushed Grapes is an album with which you can see yourself evolving. It inspires us to enjoy the good times, laugh until we cry, tell yourself that life can be bittersweet, and that melancholy must not be so harsh.

Over the past decade, Jason Bajada has made a lasting mark on the Quebec music scene thanks to the many songs he has written from his acclaimed albums Loveshit (2011), Le résultat de mes bêtises (2013), Volcano (2016) and double album Loveshit II (Blondie & The Backstabberz) (2017).