Living Hour on Their Prairie Influence, Film, and Finding Home

Living Hour. Photo credit: Lucas Pingitore.

Living Hour are one of Winnipeg’s most compelling exports. After first hearing them live at Sled Island in 2017, they have become a permanent fixture on my playlists. Over the years, their sound has continued to develop and with their fourth album, Internal Drone Infinity (out October 17), the band pushes their vision further with a lush, shoegaze influence.

REVERIE caught up with vocalist and guitarist Sam Sarty to talk about Living Hour’s latest album, their collaboration with Melina Duterte of Jay Som and how their relationship with film influences their work.

REVERIE: Coming from Winnipeg, how has your hometown shaped your identity as artists? 

Sam: Winnipeg has an amazing music scene and is full of inspiring artists. We have been surrounded by a sweet and supportive music community since we started as a band which has allowed us to spread our wings. 

REVERIE: I particularly love your track "Miss Miss Miss." How does your love for Winnipeg influence your lyrics and the stories you tell? 

Sam: We talk about Winnipeg a lot in our songs. On our new album, the song “Texting” was inspired by the process of trying to explain Winnipeg to someone over text. I needed to capture this existence and the feeling of living in Winnipeg. I have a complex relationship with the city. I was born in Newfoundland, where my mom’s from, and we moved to Winnipeg when I was one. Winnipeg is all I’ve known, but my bones and self yearn for this place where I was born. I went back last summer and felt an immediate connection that language could not explain, but my body and DNA could understand. Still, Winnipeg has always felt like home. I wanted this song to capture the complexity in my relationship to the city. Always wanting to leave, but never leaving. I wanted the lyrics to express this constant destruction and rebuilding of a place. 

REVERIE: So often, prairie artists feel like they have to move to Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver to really "make it" as a band. What’s kept you rooted in the prairies, and how has that decision shaped your journey as artists? 

Sam: We have toured so much over the years so even though we live in Winnipeg we feel connected to so many other amazing music scenes across North America. We love being a part of the Winnipeg scene and are proud of how we’ve helped.

REVERIE: You've also really shown that success doesn’t require moving to one of these larger cities. Living Hour has collaborated with some really exciting artists like Melina Duterte from Jay Som. How did you get connected? 

Sam: We first met Melina at SXSW when we both played the Urban Outfitters stage and then we reconnected in Winnipeg when she was on tour with Chastity Belt when we opened for them. We hit it off and eventually sent some new album demos to her and asked if she was interested in working with us and she was! She came to Winnipeg for two weeks in November of 2023 and we made the album at two different local studios, it was truly an amazing experience. We have great in studio dynamic with Melina and we’re very thankful for how she added her magic to our songs. 

REVERIE: Sam, your background as a projectionist sounds like it inspires so much of your lyricism. How does your relationship to film inspire your writing?

Sam: I imagine our new album Internal Drone Infinity as a series of small movies projected out from within myself. The album was written while I was working as a projectionist at The Dave Barber Cinematheque, and it’s such an internal album, so it makes sense to me that my body could exist as a projection room. 

Much of the album deals with how my inner self interacts with the outside world: the places I’m from and the people I love, and the landscapes and weather that seep inside. There’s a lot of remembering and recovering — getting better and understanding who I am based on who I have been. With this, I was able to feel inside of myself. I was able to listen to the constant chatter of my mind, then give it a name and a sound. 

REVERIE: Winnipeg itself has this weird, wonderful cinematic legacy — there's the fervent love of Phantom of the Paradise and it's the city that inspired Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg — do you feel influenced by that cinematic tradition in your own songwriting?

Sam: I think so many great artists have their own tribute to Winnipeg. I definitely recommend watching Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg,” Matthew Rankin’s “Universal Language,” and “Kubasa In a Glass,” Rhayne Vermette’s “Ste. Anne,” or John Paizs’ “Crime Wave,” and to listen to “Left and Leaving” by The Weakerthans. 

I think a lot about permanence in film and music. When I was working at my job as a projectionist, I thought about how a lot of the actors in the movies we show are dead now. We show thousands of photographs of the dead per second in order to make a moving picture of them; to make them alive again. 

With recorded music, it’s so special to have an artifact of my voice and my favourite people’s voices entwined into one choir. I think about being able to listen to it later when I’m old and it makes me cry! 

Documentation has been a habit or reflex of mine for as long as I can remember and many parts of this album feel like a tribute to this practice and to a place that is so complex and beautiful in its own way. 

REVERIE: Which other Winnipeg artists are you excited about right now? 

Sam: Fencing, Veneer, Virgo Rising, Jamboree, Synthetic Friend, TARP, Our Friend, Oscar, Tired Cossak, Hut Hut, Merin, Strawberry Punch, French Class, Peacebreach and Holy Void.

Living Hour’s second single “Waiter” is out today. Check out the music video below. Their fourth full-length album, Internal Drone Infinity, is out October 17.