Coyote Butterfly is the first album of new songs in two years from singer-songwriter, Simon Joyner, following the overdose death of his son, Owen, in August of 2022. Drawing on the kaleidoscopic nature of grief, Joyner explores his loss through a series of imagined dialogues and raw confessions. The album is a tribute to Owen, but what Joyner generously delivers is an intimate glimpse at his attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible.
The album is bookended by field recordings overlaid with minimalist guitar laments. The first, a spring thrum of sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, functions as an invitation to the elegies which follow, while the last, the late-August drone of cicadas returns us to a life of sweat on the skin, sirens in the distance, and the things we cannot change but must somehow accept. In between these instrumentals, Joyner grapples with regret and fear, shame and love. From the opening song, “I’m Taking You With Me” to the gut-wrenching remorse of “My Lament,” Joyner lays bare the struggles of those left in the wake of personal devastation. On the title track, we hear Joyner perform an elemental incantation, a heartbroken ode infused with forgiveness. The final song of the album, “There Will be a Time,” is a meditation on a future where such suffering, both personal and universal, might be softened by understanding.
In creating an album of such intimacy, Joyner reminds us of the importance of using art to alchemize the deeply personal into transformative beauty. Throughout the album we are invited to stand with him in the aftermath and have our own hearts crack open. Coyote Butterfly is a beautiful evocation of a father’s grief but also serves as an enduring testament to love and the life that endures after loss.
The musicians playing alongside Simon on Coyote Butterfly are among his closest friends; David Nance, James Schroeder, Kevin Donahue, Ben Brodin, and Michael Krassner. It’s thanks to their sensitive arrangements and loving support that the songs on Coyote Butterfly could be performed and documented.
The cassette format itself plays a significant role in shaping the aesthetic and experiential qualities of the work. Tapes being inherently ephemeral; they degrade over time, their fidelity eroding with each playback. In this sense, Toivonen’s choice of medium aligns with the themes of temporality and decay that permeate Taivaskanava. The physicality of the cassette—its material vulnerability—becomes a metaphor for the fragility of perception, the impossibility of fully grasping the divine, the eternal, or the infinite.
Taivaskanava is an ambitious and deeply affecting work that engages with themes of time, spirituality, and the limits of human perception. Toivonen’s delicate interplay of acoustic and electronic elements, coupled with his subtle manipulation of sound and silence, creates a work that feels both meditative and disorienting. It invites the listener into a space where the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical blur, and where sound becomes a vehicle for exploring the vast, unknowable spaces of the sky, of heaven, and of the self. Through its fragmented, recursive structure, Taivaskanava evokes a sense of being out of time, caught between worlds—an auditory "channel" that gestures toward the divine without ever fully arriving.
The album is bookended by field recordings overlaid with minimalist guitar laments. The first, a spring thrum of sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, functions as an invitation to the elegies which follow, while the last, the late-August drone of cicadas returns us to a life of sweat on the skin, sirens in the distance, and the things we cannot change but must somehow accept. In between these instrumentals, Joyner grapples with regret and fear, shame and love. From the opening song, “I’m Taking You With Me” to the gut-wrenching remorse of “My Lament,” Joyner lays bare the struggles of those left in the wake of personal devastation. On the title track, we hear Joyner perform an elemental incantation, a heartbroken ode infused with forgiveness. The final song of the album, “There Will be a Time,” is a meditation on a future where such suffering, both personal and universal, might be softened by understanding.
In creating an album of such intimacy, Joyner reminds us of the importance of using art to alchemize the deeply personal into transformative beauty. Throughout the album we are invited to stand with him in the aftermath and have our own hearts crack open. Coyote Butterfly is a beautiful evocation of a father’s grief but also serves as an enduring testament to love and the life that endures after loss.
The musicians playing alongside Simon on Coyote Butterfly are among his closest friends; David Nance, James Schroeder, Kevin Donahue, Ben Brodin, and Michael Krassner. It’s thanks to their sensitive arrangements and loving support that the songs on Coyote Butterfly could be performed and documented.
The cassette format itself plays a significant role in shaping the aesthetic and experiential qualities of the work. Tapes being inherently ephemeral; they degrade over time, their fidelity eroding with each playback. In this sense, Toivonen’s choice of medium aligns with the themes of temporality and decay that permeate Taivaskanava. The physicality of the cassette—its material vulnerability—becomes a metaphor for the fragility of perception, the impossibility of fully grasping the divine, the eternal, or the infinite.
Taivaskanava is an ambitious and deeply affecting work that engages with themes of time, spirituality, and the limits of human perception. Toivonen’s delicate interplay of acoustic and electronic elements, coupled with his subtle manipulation of sound and silence, creates a work that feels both meditative and disorienting. It invites the listener into a space where the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical blur, and where sound becomes a vehicle for exploring the vast, unknowable spaces of the sky, of heaven, and of the self. Through its fragmented, recursive structure, Taivaskanava evokes a sense of being out of time, caught between worlds—an auditory "channel" that gestures toward the divine without ever fully arriving.
