TERRA LIGHTFOOT – “A GOOD SIGN”
SONIC UNYON RECORDS
In contrast to the anthemic riffs of New Mistakes (2017) and the bold alt-pop of Healing Power (2023) – both JUNO Award and Polaris Prize-nominated works – Home Front represents a deliberate return to stillness and space. It’s an album about finding grounding, about listening more closely: to nature, to home, to yourself.
Leading the charge is the luminous single “A Good Sign,” a song born from silence, water, and wilderness that ultimately inspired both the move to Lightfoot’s Haliburton Highlands home and the creation of the record itself.
The spark came in the summer of 2020, when a friend invited Lightfoot to spend a week in a rustic log cabin on “Peace Island.” After months of lockdown in a Hamilton apartment, the stillness of the lake and vast quiet of the wilderness felt overwhelming. Sitting on the dock at sunset, she wrote “A Good Sign” in one sitting – words and melody flowing together in a moment of clarity. A few months later, she and husband/co-producer Jon Auer bought a house just minutes away, which became both their sanctuary and recording space.
Recorded entirely in that house – once a 1960s hunt camp, later transformed into an artist’s retreat – Home Front blurs the line between music and environment. Tracks were captured in the living room, on the back porch, and late at night when crickets and peepers were at their loudest. Moose, herons, and bears roam the surrounding woods; their presence permeates the spirit of the album, which trades Lightfoot’s trademark rock guitar firepower for softly strummed nylon strings, field recordings, and vulnerable, unhurried storytelling.
“A Good Sign” stands at the heart of that journey – the track that sparked the move, the record, and a new chapter of life and music for Lightfoot. Together with Home Front, it marks her most personal, place-rooted work yet
ARTIST QUOTE
This was the song that inspired the move to the country house, and this record, in the first place. A friend called and invited me to a place called “Peace Island” not far from where we live now. I spent a week there in an old log cabin during the summer of 2020, and fell in love with the area. I wrote this song on the dock while staring out at the water at sunset. After many pandemic months spent in Hamilton in a small apartment with no outdoor space, the silence and vast openness of the wilderness and the lake was almost jarring. I wrote out the words and music, and a few months later ended up buying a house only a few minutes down the road.
Terra Lightfoot
Home Front
(Sonic Unyon Records)
Release Date: October 17, 2025
Artist Links
SPILL NEW MUSIC: ANDREW SPICE – “JUNK”
SPILL NEW MUSIC: ALLEGORIES – “STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT”
SPILL NEW MUSIC: DANNY MILES – “NOT GONNA FIT IN”
SPILL NEW MUSIC: IAN NORTH – “CLIFFS OF PORTUGAL”
