New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Vancouver songwriter Jenny Banai released her sophomore album, couchwalker, earlier this year to much acclaim. Today, Banai has premiered couchwalker on film via Audiofemme - a short film that represents the emotional pulls within her humanity as she sorts through her convictions and feelings regarding relationship choices and her faith. The film was funded by Canada Council for the Arts.
Inspired, in part, and due to the limited ways live music can be shared in our current COVID-world environment, Banai envisioned a multi-medium digital concept performance to clarify couchwalker on another level, so as to invite viewers in as close as one can to the music, and to her particular creative character.
Starring Banai, the film features long single-shot segments in a warehouse fashioned to look like a living room set, with a couch-and her interactions with said couch-as the centerpiece. Pulling on her novice dance and theatre background, and audio editing skills, the creation of couchwalker on film both challenged and unveiled Banai's abilities.
She first edited her album down to twenty minutes of audio; a mix of full album production, lo-fi live takes and voice memos, to create an audio narrative. She then brought on film director, Matej Balaz of Colla Films and choreographers and dancers,
Joanna Anderson and Kezia Rosen, as her collaborating partners on the project.
Over weeks of meetings, a handful of rehearsals and two postponements, couchwalker on film became the intricate and nuanced piece that it is. Expressing the wrestling match between the conscious and subconscious, reason and intuition, convictions and feelings, Banai brings the viewer into a world where moving through various emotions is both an invitation and a necessity, and how we move through them is the choice we are gifted with.
Banai says that, "'couchwalker' grew up into an album with the all-too-eager help of heartbreak, uncertainty and questions to do with faith." Each song embodies a timeless longing of the soul for mutual understanding and deep connection. Exclaim! declared Banai, "one of the most gifted vocalists on the scene today," while The
Globe & Mail described the album's "Paper Plain" single as, "Sounding like the fictitious love child of
Feist and Smokey Robinson," adding, "Jenny Banai, on 'Paper Plain', is dreamily confused about the rules of personal engagement."
couchwalker is out now digitally and on a gorgeous limited edition vinyl, funded by the Fraser Valley
Music Awards. Banai was awarded the 'Alternative/Indie Artist of the Year', this year, by the FVMA, along with the 2018 'Folk Artist of the Year'.
