Port Cities and Emma-Lee: “I Still See You At Parties”. We defy you to listen to this banger of a track just the once – and not be humming, whistling or singing the hook within an hour or so!
Port Cities are from Canada’s Nova Scotia and started out as a trio in 2015. All three members were already established solo artists in their own right with six albums between them. They met at a songwriting camp in 2011.
Keyboard player and singer Breagh MacKinnon left the band in December 2019, and Carleton Stone (vocals, guitar) and Dylan Guthro (vocals, guitar, programming) decided to stay together as a duo.
The band have won a slew of awards and nominations in their native country, clocked up many miles and hundreds of gigs, toured internationally including some UK festivals and released a bunch of singles and remixes. Their self titled debut album dropped in 2017.
The song was inspired by a conversation with their friend and and collaborator Emma-Lee in Nashville. They were in a writing room and Dylan was discussing a recent break-up that he was still working through.
He explained that everything’s was all good between him and his ex, and they still talked and got along, but he still saw her at parties and that’s when it got difficult for him emotionally.
The room went quiet, all three writers stopped what they were doing and realised after he said that line, they had the spark of a good song idea. So they wrote it there and then.
“We were aiming to capture the feeling of running into an ex-lover who you have a complicated past with, but we wanted to approach it in a light-hearted way.
‘I Still See You At Parties’ recognises that there are always lingering feelings when you see each other in person after a relationship has ended”.
Great track. Ones to watch……………..
