To Purchase FULL VINYL of What We Started - Featuring Lost Cause
https://paragoncause.bandcamp.com/album/what-we-started-2
When creativity meets talent, drive, and encouragement from a valued mentor, the results can be spectacularly successful and incredibly fulfilling.
Ottawa-based ethereal alternative/electro-pop duo Paragon Cause are such a case, as their new full-length album, What We Started, is a powerfully bold statement by a band that is brimming with confidence and artistic zeal.
Coming less than a year after the release of their EP Lies Between Us, it sees the dynamic musical duo of Michelle Opthof and Jay Bonaparte reunite with producer/songwriter Sune Rose Wagner, a Danish pop music legend, best known for his band The Raveonettes. Together, over an intensive and intensely collaborative session in the fall of 2019, they composed, arranged and produced an collection of 10 exceptional new songs, that highlight the magical way Paragon Cause have evolved as artists, developing a style and sound that is imbued with emotional darkness, light and plenty of shades of grey.
The first single for the album, Lost Cause, is the perfect example of this edgy and more instinctive approach to writing, as it began with Opthof noodling around on a piano, while Wagner and Bonaparte were out of the studio. They returned and encouraged her to keep developing the unique riff into a full composition. She later added parts of lyrics that she had rolling around in her head for some time, brought a powerfully compelling melody into the mix and a potential hit was born.
“It’s a song about the end of a relationship and coming to the conclusion that the other person is a lost cause. Sune loved the song right from the beginning, and once I started working on the lyrics and melody, it just came together super fast after that. I guess I was just in a mood,” Opthof said with a chuckle.
Thematically and sonically, Paragon Cause’s form of pop music is expressive, but often of emotions and experiences that lean towards the darker, grittier and less rose-tinted version of the human experience. Opthof admits that writing is a way for her to process and expunge her darker thoughts, and express sentiments that may not always be happy, but are ones that most people can identify with – exactly the purpose of good art.
