Alex Henry Foster Releasing 'Windows in the Sky'
Alex Henry Foster, lead singer and songwriter for the Juno Award nominee post-rock band Your Favorite Enemies, releases his first solo album 'Windows in the Sky' outside of Canada for the first time on May 1st. The album is an intimate poetry essay about finding peace, faith and hope through the context of grief, depression, and distress. It is the first project to be released within a new partnership venture established between his label Hopeful Tragedy Records and Sony Music Entertainment / The Orchard and ended up being #3 in the Canadian Billboard Charts on the first week of its release, right behind Muse and Imagine Dragons, also reaching #1 for several weeks after selling more than 15 000 albums.
AHF is not only a Christian post rock band but is one of a special significance, especially following the passing of the lead singer’s father in 2016. In an interview with CBC, Alex Henry Foster talked about his spiritual perspectives, God, music and the campaign for his first solo project called “Windows in the Sky”: “I’ve successfully avoided talking about my faith in the media for years'', at the end of his interview on the connections between God and music, he refers to the Grammy night, saying, "When those people get up at the Grammys and say, 'I thank God’, I always imagine God going, 'Oh, don't - Please don't thank me for that one…’ In other words, I’m a Christian by faith, not by genre or label, and music is my weapon.”
Alex has always been dedicated to reaching out to his generation through music that would speak people’s language based on what Jesus did when it came to faith, forgiveness, grace and eternity. After spending a decade as the leader of JUNO nominee band Your Favorite Enemies, Foster describes his first solo project as a contemplative and reflective landscape where purposelessness, vulnerability and disarray press for an honest examination of the true character of your personal spirituality, the distress of your life’s failures and the everlasting sense of regret that keeps on blooming as you try to survive the implacable bewilderment of loss and the mourning reality of your own impermanent existence.
The story of Alex Henry Foster & The Long Shadows might be this: having begun as a band that was uncertain about the idea of pursuing a life of faith through music, they have resolved that uncertainty. Their thin ecclesiology has become thick, to the point of buying an old Catholic church to convert it into a professional recording studio. Today, they are their own faith community; they even have a philanthropic arm, which has improved the lives of thousands of people around the world, which renews the vows of the almost abandoned church to be a shelter to those who need.
About his album, Alex said: “For years, I’ve been looking for deep personal emotions to be channeled within the safe and elusive context of a band’s dynamic, so I wouldn’t have to be exposed through their real colors, wouldn’t have to assume any intimate implication. I simply hid behind the thick curtain of distant screams and uprising noises. It’s only when my father passed and that I slowly started to work on the songs that would ultimately define the spirit of “Windows in the Sky” that I had to admit that unless I would be willing to tear that bleak veil of fears down, I wouldn’t be able to let any of those vivid emotions be, wouldn’t be able to free them from my exultant struggle to stand into the light… and therefore to have my depressive soul emancipated through the honest embracement of those hidden emotions… one glimmer at the time… which is exactly how the album would finally come to life.”
