Earlier this month, I spent the better part of an evening walking around my city: south to north, east and west, passing renewal and decay and everything in between. This adventure held no great importance and lacked a specific destination—quite simply, I was bored, seeking some fresh autumn air and in need of some alone time away from the walls of my childhood bedroom. This is how I found myself purposefully alone in the middle of Halifax, putting in my earbuds and hitting play on Toronto singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle’s new album, Pink City.

I’ll admit that my initial attraction to this record—and perhaps why I chose it for a nighttime October walk—was purely sonic. Pink City is gorgeously recorded and produced, and Castle’s voice—powerful in its subtlety, drifting between monotone intonation and arresting, upper-register flutters—is one of my favourite musical discoveries of the year. Beyond that, the record feels very autumnal to me in an honest, comforting way (a quality that I’m not very interested in discussing—it can be difficult to justify—but that merits mention here if only because it felt so essential to my experience with the album). There’s something about this album’s instrumentation that feels to me like an autumn album should—pedal steel and flute sneak in and out among careful chord progressions, evoking feelings of bucolic landscapes and reminding me of A.C. Newman’s underrated Shut Down The Streets. “When summer got old again / fall is a fair weather friend,” goes a verse on “Sparta,” a sentiment that I found myself nodding along to as leaves crunched under my feet.

During my exploration, I spent a lot of time thinking about how context can totally define an experience. I’ve walked the streets of Halifax countless times, and while almost every corner in the city centre is immediately familiar, my perception of these places seems to shift situationally: the same quiet corner can seem idyllic on the best of days and completely boring on the worst; similarly, always seeing familiar faces around town can feel either restricting or inspiring in a tight-knit community sort of way—often a combination of both. In some moments, I found myself craving escape from the mundanity of a city I know all too well: “One of my girls, she’s living the dream / out in a cabin for a dollar a day,” sings Castle on “Sailing Away.” I passed vacant historic spaces and empty shops; places that once felt exciting but later seemed small and static. In that moment, I too craved escape from my life in Halifax. Some days, it seems like the perfect amalgam of urban sensibility and small town walkability and charm; that day, it felt neither urban nor peaceful, at once too large and not large enough.

As Pink City came to a close, however, the record’s title track provided a relapse from my desire to escape: “Oh pink city / somewhere between / all the sun on your glass / and the all knowing past / I’m finding new romance at last.” It’s an optimistic note to end on, but the melody that Castle lends to the line feels incomplete, still awaiting a return to the tonic. Perhaps this was intentional, suggesting that even in a place that is totally familiar—my pink city, your pink city, places of sun and glass and a knowing past—there are still beautiful new things to be found.

Pink City is available now via No Quarter Records and Idée Fixe Records.