Drum tracks laid to tape on a snowy winter day. Perhaps surprising to imagine, given the album’s warmth and unabashed exuberance, but that’s how the foundation was built for Feral Harmonic, the sophomore album from Old Canes.

That’s how it began and would continue on throughout the album’s creation: always with drum tracks recorded, coincidentally, on the first days of snow in the winter. Chris Crisci would add the rest of the instrumentation himself over the following months, with the additional help of a revolving cast of musicians contributing various parts. And with production regularly interrupted by one thing or another – touring, work, other projects, life in general – it took him three and a half years to complete the album in his basement studio (now known as the Toyshop).

Well worth the wait, the music on Feral Harmonic is bold and loud. While folk music at heart, the presentation is far from traditional, with the songs drawing elements from different influences (such as indie and even punk rock), and the rulebook of contemporary recording thrown out the window. “Production value, fidelity, a low noise floor, whatever, are all beside the point,” says Crisci. “The only things I care about are the idea and the energy. When folk, traditional music, punk, rock...so many styles of music lose out when the focus is on slick production, and not on expressing what matters most in a song.