Interview: Alternative Songwriter David Jane Chases a Moment Outside of Time on Ethereal New EP ‘Ambleside’

Toronto singer-songwriter and filmmaker David Jane shares his new EP, Ambleside, an alternative collection born from the disorienting aftermath of a transformative year spent studying film in Vancouver. Rooted in longing, memory, and the strange ways the past continues to exist within the present, the five-track project finds David pairing his raw, acoustic songwriting with producer Sam Arion’s expansive ambient soundscapes to capture the feeling of desperately wanting to return to a time and place that can never truly be recreated.

The seeds of Ambleside were planted during the late stages of COVID, when David, creatively paralyzed after releasing his debut EP, turned back to his first love of film in search of new inspiration. A year at Vancouver Film School quickly became everything he had been craving: an intensely creative community, new friendships, adventure, parties, love, and a sense that everyday life had temporarily suspended itself. Returning home was a shock.

“It felt like all of us were existing in this miracle lapse, as if the rest of the world was on hold,” David recalls. “But, as all things do, our year eventually came to an end, and the sucker punch of returning to reality was a lot to process, which finally led me back to my passion for music.”

The EP’s focus and title track, “Ambleside,” brings that longing back to a specific place: Ambleside Beach in North Vancouver. Away from the spontaneity and bustle David associated with places like Kitsilano and English Bay, Ambleside became a quiet respite as his year in Vancouver approached its end – somewhere the rush of the city seemed to disappear and time itself became strangely elastic.

Across Ambleside, David processes that lost chapter from different angles. “Garden Out Back” pleads for the reincarnation of a lost love; “Concussion” romanticizes a fading past as its final moments seem to slip away; “Five and Dime” turns toward film, music, and art as an escape from an unfamiliar reality; and “Story of a Night” considers what happens when the present begins to exist entirely in the shadow of what came before. The title track ultimately brings those ideas together in one emphatic refusal to let the past disappear.

On “Ambleside,” that philosophy becomes both place and feeling. David remembers the beach as somewhere he could sit after a busy day, watch the sun disappear over the water, and briefly feel removed from everything around him. Hours could pass almost unnoticed, followed by a hazy return to the city and an inexplicable desire to go back.

Produced by Sam Arion, the title track places David’s rustic, folk-influenced songwriting inside an ethereal world of dreamlike synths, ambience, and the sound of actual waves. Built around only four persistent chords across its nearly five-minute runtime, the song uses melodic push and pull to create a tranquil, almost meditative headspace while gradually deepening its sense of yearning.

1. What did you enjoy most about the creation of this new release?

I feel like on the writing side, lyrically, it was as if the writing of these songs allowed me to relive the moments they were about, and the whole project became an exercise in trying to reclaim time lost, as if were I able to write the perfect song then somehow I could recapture that exact feeling the song was about. It seems a bit silly in hindsight but within the process of writing, it was like a benevolent addiction that pushed me through night after night of inspired writing which is not always easy to come by.

On the actual recording side, I really enjoyed working with my producer, Sam Arion – I’ve always loved these ambient, atmospheric soundscapes in the background of what’s otherwise very straightforward, tin-pan-alley-esque songwriting structures and storytelling. It elevates the listening experience and creates a sonic world around the track without taking away from the directness of good songwriting that I’m so drawn to. My writing fits almost entirely into the latter, so to work with someone like Sam who’s so good at the “maximalist” side of things (see his solo project, Mute Choir) was a thrill. Each song ended up in its own kind of production standoff where I’d insist it needed more but also shut down every attempt to add a new instrument until Sam, like the wizard he is, would come up with the most magical, tiny little background resonance, that somehow tied everything together and the high of those moments, where things just “clicked,” still feels unmatched.

2. Share a nugget of advice that has resonated with you most over the years.

I feel like I’ve lived too much of my life and still do with a nonchalance towards advice – I could probably write a treatise on advice I should have taken or should be taking. It’s not that I’m adverse to it, it’s that I kind of homogenize all advice I receive into a kind of rhythmic day-to-day. If I could put some form of that into something that’s always been important to me at my most productive it’s that you need to allow yourself the time to be bored, and allow yourself the acceptance that sometimes it just doesn’t come.

3. Who would be your dream artist/band to co-headline a tour with?

I love an artist with a tongue-and-cheek sense of irony behind everything they do, as if it’s all some kind of inside joke that everyone’s dying to be a part of – I feel like I’d have a lot of fun with Role Model or Cameron Winter or something, maybe even Arcy Drive.
Someone like Suki Waterhouse would also be a lot of fun – I think we share a lot of influences and I’d love to step into that Model, Actress, Whatever world she’s crafted where everything is so FUN without ever feeling unserious or childish, perhaps because she’s so good at it. I also feel like our voices would mesh well.

4. What sets your music apart from others in your genre?

I’m obsessed with songwriting as a “craft,” and I believe there are a lot better craftspeople, better songwriters, than me that can’t write a song as good as I can. They can probably write a song easier than I can, or pump out an overall higher quality of song more consistently, but I feel like my obsession with the art of writing and what makes a good song sometimes shines a light that, when it clicks, comes with a real kind of magic. I don’t know how to explain that in a more tangible way but I’ve written hundreds of songs and I almost always immediately know which ones have it and which don’t. The majority don’t, but everything on this EP really does.

5. Tell us what your favourite song is at the moment and why.

My favourite current song at the moment is “Kill Me” by Phoebe Bridgers – I’ve been enamoured by Phoebe’s writing since I discovered Funeral in 2017. She’s in a distinct class of songwriter to me whose voice is SO distinct that at times her songs almost feel like a parody of themselves – this obviously comes with an air of distaste but I reserve this statement as praise for writers I truly admire like Bob Dylan, Cameron Winter, even Taylor Swift. That said, when it works it exists in a world of its own and I think Phoebe’s is working at its best throughout the entirety of her new album but specifically on Kill Me. She has a way of conveying the most gutwrechingly personal and powerful emotions in the most direct, almost mundane lines. “Bobby, you taught me, that I know nothing” KILLS me – poets could write a hundred soliloquies and never come close to how beautifully nuanced an expression of love that is. “Let’s go missing” is so haunting and unrevealing in the juiciest way, like a movie where everything interesting happens off camera but that only heightens the sense of mystery on screen.