St. John’s, Newfoundland is the easternmost part of the North American continent. It is one of the rainiest cities in Canada, and the home of Aaron Powell, a.k.a. Fog Lake, whose most recent record moves like raindrops slipping down a windowpane. I’ve been listening to the record on surprisingly gray mornings in Los Angeles, where the rain refuses to come, thinking of the days in high school when the drainage system was so bad we had days off for heavy rainfall.

Throughout Victoria Park, Powell’s voice leaks out in multiple layered takes, breaking off and sliding away and reconvening. The words he sings are usually short on paper, but drawn out in sound. On “Renegade,” the record’s opening track, Powell barely changes the melody or phrasing of his lines. But the words shift, and the piano accompaniment shifts, moving vast distances in comparison to his stillness and center.

The sonic palette of the record feels gray, monochrome, slightly damp. This may be a cue from the album cover, a photograph of a wall of photographs, with no true whites and no true blacks. As with the songs, the darkest and brightest color tones are slightly muted. When each low tom thud takes the shape of a big room, and when Powell’s voice slips upon itself, I think back to the cover.

For most of the record, the rhythm section acts as accompaniment, accentuation, or adornment. Then, almost out of nowhere, on “Bury My Dead Horses,” the drums lock in with a bass line and mold all the other sounds to their shape. Some wildness grows around the song’s edges as it grows. Guitar and piano notes distort into the distance of a studio fade. The sun is burning off the clouds as I write and listen, but the morning still feels gray.

Victoria Park is out now via Orchid Tapes.