When a song begins with the line “There has been a rip in the fabric/ Of the spacetime continuum,” you know the artist has a little something weightier on their mind than wanting to dance with somebody who loves them. But neither is “Supernova Spacetime Continuum,” the new single from Sault Ste. Marie-born, Uxbridge-based psychedelic folk-rockers Hollowsage & the Three Mile Islanders, a metaphorically apocalyptic rumination on life, death and the nature of eternity—with a scope that reaches all the way across the universe and back.
Declaring his own inability to protect humanity from “a black hole engulfing the sun,” Hollowsage—a.k.a. Sault Ste. Marie-born, Uxbridge-based singer/songwriter Sagen Pearse—comes to terms with the looming End of Everything by musing that imminent heat death may always have been the personal destiny of every one of us. If we’re lucky, that is:
And this life is just a blink of an eye
A dream before we die
A walk through a turnstile
Leading through to the unforeseen circumstance of infinity
And I hope this is not a dress rehearsal for a second scene
An encore to everything I don’t want to do again
Pretty sobering stuff, but those are the kind of thoughts that tend to go through a guy’s head when his day job is as a funeral director. (True story.) Yet Pearse doesn’t see the sentiment as excessively morbid, saying his aim was rather to explore “the mysteries of existence and the comfort in embracing uncertainty.
“I wrote this song during a period of reflection,” he explains, “where thoughts of this life, the next, and the peace found in the unknown swirled in my mind like stars in a distant galaxy. It’s probably the fastest I’ve ever written a song—everything just flowed naturally, like a story waiting to be told.”
The process, Pearse says, was “a journey that [was] deeply personal and cosmic all at once.” Which doesn’t mean he didn’t have great company when it came to time to get the sounds he had heard in his head recorded. He credits the haunting beauty of “Supernova Spacetime Continuum” in part to the guest vocals and piano of Mark Berube and Kristina Koropecki, two artists who first crossed his radar back when he was still living in his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie. Their crucial contributions, he says, “added a dimension to the song that I couldn’t have achieved alone.”
Even more dimensions are explored in the accompanying music video, a kind of rural take on 2001: A Space Odyssey that shows three men of various ages (or is it the same person at three different ages?) going in and out of a red door that’s set up in the middle of nowhere. The climactic shot captures a knowing wink from Sandford actor Ken Welsh, a friend of Pearse and his wife who died in 2022, after filming had wrapped. The completed clip is dedicated to Welsh, in tribute to the enthusiasm and devotion he showed in advancing the project’s theme of “the timelessness of human connection and the vastness of the universe we all share.”
We get to share it multiple times on Hollowsage’s sophomore album, Aftermath, an 11-song odyssey that represents a bold new chapter in the thought-provoking, emotionally charged oeuvre of Pearse and his Three Mile Islanders (Geoff Holt, Justin Dillon, Matt Gunn and Joshua Veens). Tracks like “Mortar and Stone” and “Smoke” further the outfit’s reputation for beautiful melodies and immense crescendos, all of it in service to evocative lyrics that offer a unique perspective on life, love and dying that resonates on a deeply personal level. Kevin Ker, who engineered, produced, mixed, and contributed synth and electric guitar on the album – along with backup vocals – brings his signature touch once again, having also produced the band’s acclaimed debut record.
Those qualities were already in full bloom on the group’s debut album, 2020’s Nuclear Home, which won Album of the Year and got Hollowsage named Emerging Artist of the Year at the Oshawa Music Awards. Since then, the accolades have just kept on coming. This past summer, their song “I Am the River” hit #1 on the Hunters Bay Radio Top 20 Countdown, above such esteemed names as Pearl Jam, The Tragically Hip and Coldplay. That was on the heels of the band’s appearance at the Springtide Music Festival, which took over numerous venues in downtown Uxbridge for performances by a multitude of acts.
With the new album finding its way onto playlists both personal and corporate, expect Hollowsage’s booking calendar of festivals, club shows and house parties to start filling up anew. To Pearse and his crew, it’s all part of their ongoing quest to document “the cosmic dance that is life itself.” But honestly, the galactic infinite never had a beat this good.
