Glass Canon by Art Mom

This is a labour of love; ten songs played by many hands.

Friends and community members built tracks around a set of recordings that started in a Toronto bedroom, resulting in this heart-resetting collection of music.

Glass Canon paints a portrait of a voice too fragile to exist on its own, and Art Mom is the nurturing force that brought this voice to life.

After countless hours of singing these songs to the walls, please enjoy the fruits of this labour, as these songs make their way beyond the memory of the past and into the realm of forever.

The fierce but fragile debut album Glass Canon went through many iterations, but was not finally named until all of the songs were complete. Formerly titled Stone Soup (and before that, Mean Sardine), Sal felt the previous titles did not appropriately introduce the energy of the album. She listened to these old songs and reflected on who she was when she wrote them, and had to think critically about her previous voice. Something about this voice felt shattered, something else felt powerful, like the glittering pieces of a broken mirror, both aggressive and helpless. That’s when she remembered the trope of a glass cannon, or a character who can easily hurt others, while being unable to take a hit themselves. But canon (with one ‘n’) is not a physical weapon; it is a set of rules, books, or things accepted to be true. Equally capable of being destructive, and being unsuspectingly fragile. A play on words to demonstrate that her aggression stems from intellect, the weapon is in her own mind.

The story behind the name Art Mom comes from the experience of producing the first set of songs. Lead singer and songwriter Sal Talon noticed that making music feels like bringing life forth, and that producing songs feels like working with living beings. Not only must songs be worked on, but they must be worked with; played with and evolved so that they may eventually stand on their own. The evolution of these songs reminded Sal of human development from childhood to adulthood, and the process was rewarding, passionate, instinctual, time-consuming, and often thankless. By the end of the production process, Sal felt like she was in a mother role with her own art. Funnily enough, the inspiration hit her while doing laundry, ironing clothes in fuzzy pink slippers. She said to herself, “I am Art Mom.”