After enthralling guitar fiends with their tight yet confessional 2024 debut album Some Kind of Heaven, knitting didn’t have to retreat for very long before they had an entirely new album on their hands. Souvenir is the product of frontperson Mischa Dempsey’s existential musings, dreamed up in what little downtime they had between their debut album cycle, world tours, plus appearances at SXSW and New Colossus Festival. Dempsey constructed the skeletons of each song on Souvenir, while guitarist/engineer Sarah Harris (Ultra Farl), bassist Piper Curtis (Sunforger), and drummer Andy Mulcair (Andy and the Dannys, Lovelet) brought the songs to life over brief but productive studio sessions in St. John’s, NL and Montreal, QC. After extensive collaboration over the past two years on writing, recording, and touring, learning how to make that collaboration work its magic, knitting crafted Souvenir into a properly introspective sonic experience.
In the two years since knitting introduced themselves on Some Kind of Heaven, the fledgling band has, in a sense, grown up. As level-headed as the Canadian band may be, owing to their decade-plus of DIY experience, the highs and lows of completing, releasing, and promoting a debut indie rock album showed the band what they can control themselves and what’s out of their hands. While the band’s earliest performances showed strength, owing to each member’s teenage years spent learning how to be good bandmates, they were a little green when it came to releasing professionally. You have to be green to dive head-first like they did. Some Kind of Heaven sports a consistently ‘gazey, grungy slacker rock aesthetic, earning comparisons ranging from DIIV to Hole to Alex G, jumping between songs discussing everything from trans identity to domestic doldrums. Eager audiences across North America and Europe responded right away. In 2026, knitting is a little more seasoned, less interested in making a big splash as they are in honing their craft and pushing their creative limits. The resurgent Montreal DIY scene is a consistent source of inspiration for the band, and they wanted the scene’s sonic diversity to be reflected on their next album. For Souvenir, their sonic palette has the same centerpiece but far more breadth, while every song has an introspective, existential backbone. It’s an inversion of Some Kind of Heaven’s aesthetically tight narrative bricolage. The album came together over studio sessions in Dempsey & Mulcair’s home of Montreal, Quebec, and Harris’ home of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Album opener “I Want to Remember Everything” is based on the faint echo of one of Dempsey’s childhood favorite songs by Linkin Park, one of those towering bands who pushed Dempsey to fall in love with rock music in all of its messy iterations. Over tumbling drum fills and leering guitars, they look back on the supposedly uncool parts of themselves they tried to shed in moments of insecurity: “You know I tried to rearrange / What I hated / And I never noticed my mistake.” It’s gently existential compared to more urgent tracks. Take “I Wasn’t Fully Cooked,” which enters with an even more lumbering bellicosity. Ultimately, that cloud gives way to a gently racing fear Dempsey confronted about potentially dying before getting to come out to family as trans: “And what if it happened / While we were laughing / With reckless abandon? / And my sentence got cut off? / And I wasn’t fully cooked?” It’s less a fear of rejection so much as it is a fear of not getting to bask in the truth with loved ones who just might be prepared to see you as you are.
There’s still room for fun amongst Souvenir’s introspection. “Photocopy” is one of the catchiest anti-work indie rock songs ever crafted, entering with a promise delivered with almost parodic sincerity: “I got a day job / On my word, yeah I swear to God / This is the one that I won’t give up.” Dempsey will be the first to admit that they can’t stand to stay at any one non-knitting job before they feel overwhelmed with physical and psychological dread. They’ve endured every stereotypical service job imaginable. You can even hear some words smile with the enforced restraint of an over-tested retail clerk. That sense of being weighed down appears time and time again. On “Here Comes,” Dempsey sounds like they’re being pulled in every direction before they finally ask, “I’ve made myself too many promises / When will I realize I’m not built for this?” That said, there are moments where Dempsey makes optimistic pacts. They promise clarity, honesty, and presence on “Shuffle,” stating: “So I’m clearing a path to wherever I am / ‘Cause I want you to know it’s where I’ve been / Yeah, I’m sick of trying to stick to a plan / That I made when I didn’t wanna be found.”
As knitting has grown from a lockdown experiment into a working band, each member has expanded their skill sets, allowing the band to accomplish more on their own or within their web of friendships. They didn’t rehearse much before holing up in the studio, owing to their cramped schedule, so Dempsey’s germinal ideas needed the rest of the band’s unique perspectives to usher final drafts and recordings into something fruitful. Mulcair’s drumming is more intricate and full of surprises; Harris taking the engineer’s helm meant the band didn’t have to translate their unique internal language to a third party. As the songs on Souvenir were primarily produced in Harris' studio, the tracks benefited from more extensive experiments with the drum machines and synthesizers that studio-mates had lying around. Their occasional prominence speaks to an eagerness to grow beyond the strictures of a rock band format. The band’s dear friend Rhys Climenhage took charge of the mixing, owing to knitting’s increased belief that tapping your network’s talent leads to a better final product than pursuing so-called prestige outside, since even the finest engineers can’t approximate what your friends can intuit from years of casual rapport. Souvenir sounds introspective and even woeful, but it listens like something more relaxed: you can hear the mutual understanding between every performer, each using their individual talents to help translate nuanced or hard-to-verbalize sensations. There’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a band find their groove and revel in it.