Alexander Gallant has the afterlife worked out. The Halifax songwriter opens “Fishes For The Seabirds,” the first single from his upcoming third album The Prince Of Birchy Head, with a prayer answered: he’ll come back as a small seabird. He admits he has no idea where those birds go when a storm rolls in, only that they seem to come through fine, and that’s enough for him to sign up.
The job he wants in that next life is specific. When morning comes, he’ll be part of the flock, “cleaning the feathers of my friends.” Biologists call that allopreening, birds grooming each other’s feathers, and plenty of seabird species do it to keep partners and neighbors fit to fly. It makes care sound like routine maintenance, and the second verse extends the idea to a lover. As a bird he could fly to her, hear what she has learned, and be recognized right away even without words, putting whatever he can’t say into songs.
The third verse lets the darkness in, a lament that men who bring only death share the same air as everyone else, with judgment left to heaven. Gallant answers with the title’s prayer: that the sea keeps churning, so there are always fish for the seabirds sailing toward dawn.
The arrangement shares that patience. Gallant’s fingerpicked guitar carries the song inside a restrained, spacious atmosphere, and the track takes its time getting anywhere. That unhurried pace is the right call for a song built on faith in cycles like tides and mornings. Gallant writes small and lets the sea handle the rest, and the result plays like a hymn for anyone hoping the world keeps turning gently.
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