Tim Baker has been filling venues as one-seventh of Hey Rosetta! for the last decade, but after the Newfoundland bandmates parted ways in fall 2017 the now-Toronto-based musician branched out on his own, releasing intimately performed and shot acoustic videos as part of The Side Door Sessions since October of last year. It all leads to his debut album, Forever Overhead, which holds 11 songs of original material, showing us that Baker’s voice rings out just as heart-wrenchingly on its own atop guitar and piano, particularly on a track like lead single “Dance” where he sings longingly for that titular dance (though a slow, slinky build in the second half brings some lightness to the heartache).
Baker writes nostalgically of his Newfoundland home (“’Cause no matter where I’m headed/ I’ll only end up where I been,” he sings on “All Hands”) and how those old haunts and ghosts can become a big part of your present (“Once a stranger to me/ but now you’re the song in my mouth,” he sings on “Spirit”). Forever Overhead is the singer-songwriter at his most vulnerable, one foot on the land that formed him and the other striding forward.
Shot in the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, nature is frozen in time, enclosed behind protective glass and two solitary characters exist in their work and in isolation from each other, until a beautiful moment. “For me this has always been a song sung from someone held apart – convalescing maybe, notes Tim “from someone dreaming of being alive and close to love and something important.” “Tim and I both grew up in Newfoundland,” says director Jordan Canning. “As teenagers we spent summer nights skipping stones on middle cove beach, driving up to Southside Hills to explore the cliffs, and playing spotlight in the woods, our flashlight beams scanning the trees for our friends. Nature was always within easy reach. Years later, we both find ourselves living in Toronto. Here, you can go days without stepping foot on a patch of grass. Everywhere you look there is concrete and steel and plastic and people. And when you look away it is usually to stare down at a phone or computer screen”
The Fat Angel Sings 