SPILL ALBUM PREMIERE: RED ORKESTRA – LETTERS FROM AFAR

RED ORKESTRA – LETTERS FROM AFAR

A SPILL EXCLUSIVE ALBUM PREMIERE

Canadian alt-folk rock band Red Orkestra returns with a new full-length album Letters From Afar. The album is the Kitchener-Waterloo band’s first since 2018 and seventh overall.

Written over several years, Letters From Afar builds on the foundation of the band’s impressive back catalogue, but offers listeners something new with a unique and more mature collection of songs, touching on themes of love, longing, hope, and resistance. The band, made up of songwriter Johnny Charmer (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Steve Parkinson (lead guitar), Neil McDonald (bass), and Rick Andrade (drums), are as solid as ever and push their own sonic boundaries throughout, while Charmer’s soaring vocals and poetic lyrics are as evocative as they have ever been.

“I’m so glad to get this album out finally,” says Charmer of the gap between releases caused by the pandemic and time away to complete a graduate degree, “I started writing some of these songs ten years ago and I am really pleased with this collection, so I have been keen to get it out into the world”. He adds that despite the number of years between the first song written and the last, “it’s actually a pretty cohesive record with common themes running throughout”.

The record opens with the achingly beautiful “Aces” before ratcheting up the volume and tempo with jangly rockers “You’re So Far Away” (the album’s lead single), “Always Come Around”, “Just Kids”, and “Breathless”, as well as the pulsating political anthem “Mao & Stalin” (a song that would not be out place on a Manic Street Preachers record). The album then takes a turn to the more reflective and acoustic with the haunting title track “Letters From Afar”, and the nostalgic tunes “Back to the Start” and “Sunflower Street”. The album finishes with a flourish, though, with perhaps its strongest offering, “Everstrong”, a gutsy, driven track that makes the connection between working-class solidarity and the cause of Palestinian freedom in the fight against capitalist greed and imperialism. The track ends with Charmer channelling his inner Murray Lightburn (The Dears) with the heartening refrain “you’re not alone” sung by additional voices each time it’s repeated before the song descends into its cacophonous and heart-racing finale.

Red Orkestra
Letters From Afar
(Independent)
Release Date: February 2, 2026

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Background Photo Credit: Yves Lepage