Some artists give you a year to breathe. Jon Mckiel gives you roughly twelve months before he's back with something new to sit with.
The New Brunswick singer-songwriter is returning this September with Gold Horatio, a follow-up to last year's Hex. The lead single, "Rosemary", is already out — and if you know Mckiel's sample-based approach to songwriting, you'll know what you're in for: music that layers and folds in on itself, built more like a collage than a conventional track.
Turning Around Quickly, But Not In A Rush
A year between albums sounds fast, but Mckiel has never been the type to artificially pace himself for the sake of industry optics. Hex landed in 2024, and rather than sitting back and doing the festival rounds, he's clearly been at work. That kind of output demands attention — not because prolific automatically means good, but because it signals an artist genuinely compelled to make things rather than one managing a career.
Sample-based songwriting done lazily ends up sounding like a mood board with a vocal thrown over the top. Mckiel doesn't operate like that. His approach treats the source material as the foundation of something genuinely new, which is a harder thing to pull off than most people give it credit for. It puts him in an interesting space — somewhere between the bedroom folk tradition and something more textural and constructed. It's not a million miles from what you see when artists lean hard into their process as the point of the work itself, rather than just a means to an end. Contrast that with someone like [Jonas Blue, who found himself having to essentially rebuild his relationship with music-making from scratch](/getohedz/music/jonas-blue-rebranded-learned-an-instrument-called-ai-absolutely-horrendous) — Mckiel seems to have no such crisis of purpose.
What "Rosemary" Tells Us
Lead singles are always a statement of intent, whether the artist wants them to be or not. Dropping "Rosemary" as the first taste of Gold Horatio is Mckiel planting a flag and saying: this is the register we're working in. Without overreading one track, it suggests Gold Horatio isn't going to be a departure so much as a deepening — which, given Hex had plenty of room to explore, feels like the right move.
There's also something worth noting about the geography here. New Brunswick, Canada, is not a scene that gets routinely name-checked in music press conversations. Mckiel doing this kind of work from that base, building a following on the strength of craft rather than location or industry machinery, is exactly the sort of thing worth paying attention to. It's a similar energy to what [Babehoven have been doing out of upstate New York](/getohedz/music/babehoven-announce-new-album-i-see-them-i-see-me) — artists outside the obvious centres quietly making some of the most interesting music around.
Our Take
Gold Horatio arrives in September, and we'd be lying if we said we weren't curious. Mckiel has the kind of consistency that doesn't announce itself loudly — it just shows up, does the work, and earns its place. "Rosemary" suggests he's not easing off. We'll be listening.