Jaunt - All in One (2020)

Recorded over three years and engineered in collaboration with Alex Sowinski (BADBADNOTGOOD), this collection serves as a travelogue for the band’s growth. All In One celebrates connection, creativity, and adaptation all passed through the lens of desktop pop sensibilities and an endearingly adventurous spirit. Equal parts experimental and infectiously raw, faintly electric and distinctly exposed, the cornucopia of styles and sounds presented in All In One finds itself glued together by a palpable and unique sense of understanding and friendship.

A trip down memory lane might credit Jaunt’s beginnings to an elixir of coincidence and surrendering to try something new. Pat O’Brien, now the band’s guitarist, met future lead singer and songwriter Tom Helliwell at a Halloween party, striking a friendship that manifested across a few years of jams and shared musical creations. Somewhere along the way, Pat booked a show out of the blue, the band released their first EP, Chat, and Jaunt had graduated from a digital manifest of closeted collaborations to something tangible. Keyboardist Daniel Reardon entered the fold for the band’s first performance, followed closely by the addition of drummer Duncan Hood and bassist Nick Nausbaum.

Jaunt’s artistic palette, social circle, and resume developed quickly and organically, alongside their time active in the Toronto music scene. Duncan’s friendship and collaborations with Alex Sowinski intersected with Nick’s ties to the Montreal ecosystem that produced breakouts like Homeshake and Yves Jarvis; this further fostered creative community and opportunities to tour and record on top of groundwork already established by Pat and Tom. Duncan and Nick began performing with Charlotte Day Wilson as her backing band and would cross paths with vocalist and video artist Caitlin Woelfe-O’Brien playing similar venues. A friendship was sparked, Caitlin contributed her voice to coloring the band’s second EP, Cue, and now is a full-time member of the group. By this time, Jaunt had become a well-oiled machine: a synergetic sextet fueled by earnest ambition and artistic momentum.

The band’s origin story is the genesis for what would become their full-length debut. In name, All In One, evokes wholeness while feeling vast, a testament to the record’s breadth of musical directions and underlying cohesiveness. Thematically, it’s an homage to changes and evolution experienced by Jaunt on both an individual and collective scale throughout the album’s creation. The unpredictable variables in the bandmate’s lives – new jobs, partners, successes, failures, Tom moving to Hawaii for love – all provided a backdrop and clear pathos as they developed a consistent collection of works. Some songs on the album are more recently recorded; others were pocketed for future use. The goal and meaning of All In One was always on the horizon as Jaunt navigated unwaveringly toward it.