Edge Of The Earth

Oji-Cree singer-songwriter Aysanabee is the sort of artist who can instantly stun unsuspecting audiences with his soulfully sonorous voice and furious finger-picking skills, but he deploys his raw talent in service of an expansive conceptual vision. On his Polaris-shortlisted 2022 debut, *Watin*, he used phone conversations with his namesake grandfather to piece together a deeply moving reflection on Canada’s oppressive residential-school system and the resultant intergenerational drama that still lingers in Indigenous communities. This full-length follow-up doesn’t possess the same overt narrative framework, opting instead for more personal yet universal meditations on navigating life’s many changes and challenges. Rather, *Edge of the Earth* is a portrait of Aysanabee’s surging musical ambitions and irrepressible desire to connect with the masses, as he builds humble, handclapped serenades like “Embers” and “Good Love” into towering spectacles of thundering percussion and heavenly harmonies. But amid *Edge of the Earth*’s stadium-folk anthems and heart-racing heartland rockers, Aysanabee takes a moment to eulogize the grandfather whose stories animated his breakthrough debut, yet who passed away shortly after its release. “One thing I know/Everything comes and goes with a price,” he sings ruefully on “Without You,” before transforming this morose piano ballad into a gale-force gospel hymn, and providing a real-time demonstration on how to channel grief into perseverance.