Loving, Longing, Leaving balances between recollections of ardent bonds between people and the searing discomfort when those passions fade. “Pour Out Your Heart to Me” is bouncy and personal, while “She Dreams of Snakes” is the haunting grip of the ghost left behind when bonds of trust go awry. For Dandurand, vulnerability is something worth exploring if given the opportunity to feel heard. Her tender vocals further lend to the power of the songs. Some voices, Dandurand’s included, have a resounding weight that brings the roof down into splinters. There is a gravitas to the moments of emotional pivot that make the album an absorbing listen.

Dandurand talks intensely about growing up in Abbotsford, BC, surrounded by berry farms and churches. Not fitting within the prescribed social constructs drew her to the hardcore punk community, catalyzing a move to Vancouver. “If you were a weird kid in a small town, you left as fast as you could,” she says. And her connection to the punk and hardcore music scene still runs deep; the band’s name, “Brightsides,” is inspired by her favourite album of a similar name by NYC hardcore group, Killing Time. 

Meandering back to a place left behind seems strange, but Dandurand found herself doing just that. Between where she came from and where she is now, listening to and singing country music facilitated a reconciliation between the two. “I feel like I can access and speak a language I didn’t know was meant for me, and admit that part of my past exists in a way that others want to connect with,” she confesses. Dandurand personifies a unique phenomenon of overlapping music communities, particularly those of metal, hardcore, and country. While some may think these three genres are incompatible, there is natural cross-pollination. For Dandurand, they each address mutual feelings of the intensity of otherness. Country music, she says, is some of the loneliest music there is. “It’s the songs you sing when you’re working alone to pretend you aren’t working or alone,” Dandurand says. “I write the most when I’m closing down the bar alone at the end of the night.”

Like hardcore and metal, the feeling of loneliness touches the desire for community. The music’s strength comes from telling your story or retelling someone else’s in a way that means something to you. Country, like hardcore, is not for everyone, but as Dandurand says, “everyone can have it if they need it.”