Later That Day, The Day Before, Or The Day Before That

Casey MQ sings at the start of Later that day, the day before, or the day before that, his new LP and Ghostly International debut. It's a phrase fittingly misremembered from something the LA-based, Canadian-born composer came upon as he spiraled into unconscious and subconscious-led writing sessions at the piano.

Casey is known for his 2020 breakthrough release babycasey, which gave voice to songs seen through the lens of childhood, various film score work, and collaborations with artists such as Oklou (who returns here), Eartheater, and Vagabon. His gifts as a producer and songwriter are rooted in textural world-building and the excavation of personal truth.

With Later that day, he questions what is true entirely, understanding our mind's tendency to bend and project onto pictures of the past. Across vivid, baroque pop balladry, Casey MQ reorients his recording project and point of view under the notion that memories are malleable.

Engaging his dreams and sitting with sheet music at his newly acquired piano, he looked to new and old inspirations including the works of Claude Debussy, Joni Mitchell, and Joe Hisaishi's beloved Studio Ghibli film scores.

babycasey's studied electronic sound isn't wholly abandoned on Later that day, instead, it comes through like an atmosphere, giving Casey's more spacious, minimal arrangements a distinct luster and sheen.

The textures and tones shift from song to song as if mirroring the way our minds constantly recontextualize, remember, and forget. Cathartic opener "Grey Gardens" presents the record's plaintive, haunted feeling.

Asleep At The Wheel unfolds on arpeggiated synth before a burst of symphonic color; the synth returns inverted to harmonize with the outro, "I love a car crash, I love a story, I love a memory, I swear it's real..."

Casey leans into digital imagination on the warm, introspective "Me I Think I Found It." Subdued, stuttered percussion underscores the singer as he cycles through pixelated imagery — screenshots, smiles, streetlights — searching for higher meaning through love.

Built on ascendent chord distortions, "Dying Til I'm Born" gives the record one of its boldest pulses of emotion. The back half stretches out; "Is This Only Water" is sparse and foggy, "Baby Voice" is intimate and desperate for something to remain.

"Words For Love" grooves on guitar, and "Tennisman9" aches in heartbreak. French musician Marylou Mayniel, aka Oklou, appears as the collection’s only guest for the closing duet, "The Make Believe," a bright and buoyant send-off that gives Later that day both a sense of resolve and cyclical-motion. "We are young, under the sun," they sing together, a parting image brimming with lightness.