madfolk, their first release for Royal Mountain, is a culmination not only of the last several years, but of a decade spent growing up together and slugging it out in the Toronto music scene. The band’s origins go back to when they were barely teens, when founding members Finn Scott, Michael O’Meara, and Jackson Seaward started jamming together. They spent their youth cutting their teeth playing venues like the Monarch or the departed all-ages vegan bar D-Beatstro, a stage otherwise graced by forebears like Pup and Jeff Rosenstock.

 

Members came and went until the current lineup cohered: Scott on vocals and guitar, O’Meara on bass, Seaward on drums, and Charlie Sills on guitar.

Though madfolk’s interests led to a hybrid aesthetic blending pop-punk, emo, alt-country, and folk influences, there was also a tension in their ascendant years. They felt perpetually adjacent to the scenes in Toronto, then dominated by more stoner garage rock. By the time they were recording early singles and their first album Floor Turned Blue, they were battling a self-consciousness about being “weirder” or “cooler.” 

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“We were very pop, and probably slicker than we were supposed to be at that age,” Scott now reflects. “I think you need hooks. But it just wasn’t cool in the scene. I definitely felt outside of what was happening.” 

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“We’re all a couple years older and more confident with the type of music we want to make,” O’Meara adds. “We’re no longer scared of being labeled as pop-punk — now it’s like, bring it on.” 

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madfolk is the kind of album that can only be made by friends who have stuck together through all the highs and lows of life and coming into your own. By the end, they don’t claim to have any answers, but instead present snapshots of all the chaos and messiness inherent in figuring it all out. The band sought to take that uncertainty and angst and make it exciting. Along the way, they also made it profound — creating a sophomore album that is the sound of a band becoming who they were always meant to be.