Small Talk began when Hearing Trees fell apart. 

Turbulence surrounded the recording of the Winnipeg poetry rock band’s debut full-length Quiet Dreams in 2018. The rigours of recording an album as creative journeymen resulted in a completed album but no band. With an ambitious cross-country tour already booked, a new group was hastily formed to jump in the van. 

Faced with several weeks on the road and an uncertain future, the reconstituted band found quick chemistry. A rare day off found them writing new material and feeling like they had nothing to lose, testing it at the next show. New songs formed written on stranger’s floors across the country, which were the early beginnings of Small Talk.

Newly invigorated, Hearing Trees went back on the road in 2020, workshopping a slate of new ideas. “We’d play Million Times somewhere, and people would be singing along to a chorus they’d never heard before, a band they’d never heard before” recalls founding member Graham Hnatiuk. “It felt pretty special.” The group returned just six days before pandemic lockdowns began, and were devastated to have to postpone a hometown show at The Park Theatre indefinitely.

Determined to keep working, attention was turned to the studio. Teaming up with new collaborators Rusty Matyas (Imaginary Cities, Waking Eyes) and Lloyd Peterson (The Weakerthans, JP Hoe), Small Talk was recorded over the span of two years at Moonrise Music Club in Winnipeg. To capture the energy and conditions that birthed the songs, recording was done mostly live off the floor, with minimal embellishment. “We’d spend six hours doing the same song over and over, building up and improving, and when we hit the take, we all knew it,” said drummer and founding member Kyle Kunkel. The sessions concluded in the late summer of 2022.

Small Talk is a collection of five songs portraying various conversations: the cribbage player, the confidant, the protestor, the stargazer, and the brother. Small Talk will be released in full on November 25th, 2022.

Hearing Trees returns to The Park Theatre on November 30th, 2022 to celebrate the release of Small Talk. Australian cellist and loop artist Rob Knaggs, shoe gaze outfit Guilty Sleep, and folk poet Larysa Musick join the bill for a big night of independent musicians in Winnipeg.

Hearing Trees takes you on a poetic narrative journey riding a tightrope between uncertainty and love, anchored by Graham Hnatiuk’s warm baritone. Powerful chords and delicate guitar melodies float over highway-driving rhythms, carrying an anxious conviction of hopefulness and building poetic stories to cathartic conclusions.

“…Canadian outfit channel the anthemic nature of The National with this bold and euphoric indie-rock stomper” (Mystic Sons, UK)

“…it’s not unreasonable for us to predict quite the little indie career for them” (Pretty In Noise, DE)

Hearing Trees are Kyle Kunkel, Graham Hnatiuk, Andy Cole and Eric Ducharme. They mostly reside in Winnipeg, Canada.