When Toronto-born musician Jon Vinyl stepped into Now Toronto’s studio he was radiating with a youthful exuberance specific to an artist a week out from releasing their new album.
Heartbreak Hill dropped on Friday and tracks the trials and tribulations of love and loss with a joviality that seems innate to Vinyl, who stands humming to himself in the mirror as he adjusts his microphone ahead of our conversation.
Vinyl was born in Toronto and spent much of his early life soaking up its bounteous cultural backdrop. Later, he and his family moved to Pickering where he spent time refining his sound.
“I feel as if I live in a world of R&B and pop influence, it’s a good little mix, I would say it’s 90/10 though, more R&B than it is pop… it makes it digestible for a lot of people and I think it sounds pretty good,” he said of his personal style.
Just one listen and it’s abundantly clear that Vinyl’s voice is made for R&B, his tamber is soulful and soothing, and he possesses a marked ability to dip out of a melody and into a rap with impressive ease.
One song off the album, “Let This Go,” stands out as particularly hopeful. There’s a joyfulness to its tune that seems to counteract its subject matter. It’s an attention-grabbing creative choice, one that satisfyingly ties the album’s eight songs together.
“That’s crazy you said that,” he said with a giggle on the topic of the aforementioned contrast. “We wanted to have fun while we were in the studio, so we weren’t necessarily dwelling on these [sad] moments.” The concept is heartbreak, and the lyrics speak to that, but the music says, “It’s not that serious.”
As for the “Hill” part of the title, it’s a nod to the relief of finding perspective. “It’s about being at the top of the hill, looking down and understanding why this went wrong here, or that went wrong there,” Vinyl explained, gesturing to one side of the room and then the other as he spoke. His words and motions conjure a powerful and deeply relatable image, one that is applicable to far more than heartbreak.
Vinyl went through some writer’s block while working on this album, “we were really going back and forth on lyrics, trying to figure out OK does this make sense, then we’d go back on it to the point where we were like let’s take a break, let’s go for a walk, this is getting frustrating,” he said. But it’s because he cared, and with hindsight getting stuck looks like a necessary part of the process, “after getting the end result, it was worth it,” he concluded.
Heartbreak Hill was written collaboratively, but Vinyl was careful to preserve himself in his lyrics, “you can tell that I wrote it,” he said with a smile.
Vinyl wants listeners to know that when things go wrong it’s not the end of the world, rather what matters is that people give themselves space to feel and to “ take away a lesson,” from their struggles, “go through hard times and keep it moving,” he said of the path to the final product.
Vinyl is set to embark on a tour in 2024. When the subject comes up, so does his beaming smile, “Oh yeah,” he responded eagerly, “just being in front of people and performing songs that we all love is crazy, I know it sounds so cliche, but I promise it is as good as you think it is.”
Stream Heartbreak Hill on Apple Music and Spotify.
