About

Josh Charbot has been (trying) to write songs since his first guitar lesson back in 2007. “I’d only been playing for a week or so. My teacher tried walking me through The Tragically Hip’s New Orleans Is Sinking but all I cared about was how you actually come up with a song, not how you play someone else’s.” But being just 13 at the time, writing songs he could be proud of didn’t come easy. After quickly ditching the guitar lessons, Josh learned the craft purely through trial and error; a slew of shoddily made records both as a solo artist and with his high school band came and went, each disappearing from the internet as he continued to learn from his mistakes.

In 2013, Josh began writing what wound up becoming his proper debut as a solo artist, 2014’s Bob Dylan-influenced Ordinary People. Like the multitude of ill-fated records that preceded it, Ordinary People was a decidedly DIY affair; with the exception of the drums, every instrument was played, recorded and mixed by Josh, alone in his bedroom during his time at Carleton University in Ottawa. “Something felt different when I started writing for that album. It was like something finally clicked into place.” Spawning a number of singles that were spun on college radio stations, including Nostalgia, the record also led to Josh forming a backing band to help out with his live shows.

A number of albums were quick to follow; 2015’s indie rocker Life During Wartime, 2016’s pop rock/acoustic one-two punch effort of the A Different Shade Of Blue and Six Months In Hell EPs and 2018’s experimental B-sides EP Less Sex, More Tears. In 2016, Josh’s desire to tell stories took him in a new direction; he moved to Toronto to become a screenwriter as well as help move his music career forward, forming a new band there the following year, The Fluxes. Suddenly things were starting to happen; a number of performances at revered venues like The Horseshoe Tavern and The Opera House, plus the warmly received Things I Wish I Said While You Were Standing In Front Of Me, an album that acted as a throwback to the emo tinged alt-rock music Josh grew up on in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Josh’s new record, The Depression Sessions, began as The Fluxes’ follow-up to Things I Wish I Said; it even features The Fluxes members Amanda Barbosa providing bass and backing vocals on every track as well as guitarist Scott Olgard stepping in to help on a few tracks. The dissolution of The Fluxes in late 2019 halted the album’s progress, forcing Josh to examine the collection of songs he had amassed for it. Without the earnest romanticism of A Different Shade Of Blue or the bitter angst of Things I Wish I Said, it was hard to pin down exactly what tied this group of songs together.

All that changed after seeing Hollerado’s farewell concert in December 2019; Josh went home and wrote Twenty Five, the final piece of the puzzle that was The Depression Sessions. “I think it was the first time I truly acknowledged that perhaps this whole thing isn’t going to work out. Maybe I’ve already taken this as far as it’s going to go.” Josh soon realized he had summed up the entire record’s thesis with the one song; hopelessness, more specifically the type you experience in your mid twenties when all your growing up is behind you. “Most of my friends have steady jobs, they’re getting married and buying houses and I have none of that. Nothing concrete to cling onto. That’s what this record’s about.”

Produced and self-funded with the same DIY mindset as all his records prior, The Depression Sessions was recorded largely at home as the coronavirus pandemic was taking over North America. More than just a reunion with his bandmates from The Fluxes, the record was also mixed by Joan Manuel, the same man behind Things I Wish I Said. Across its 9 tracks, the album goes in new directions for Josh; the piano ballad Paralyzed is immediately the tenderest song in Josh’s catalogue, while I Can Fall In Love With Just One Look seamlessly blends emo rock with a pop-minded danceability that Josh says he’s “Been trying to get right since The Vibes” (off 2015’s Life During Wartime). The album is out on September 4th and the new single Twenty Five is available everywhere now.