Gentlemen Of The Woods are back with ‘November Embers,’ their third album and their most fully realized recording to date. Tracked at Ottawa’s Breezehill North Studio over the winter of 2025/26 with collaborator Jeff Watkins, the 10-song record is equal parts revelry and elegy, built in careful layers to capture the warm, rich texture the band has always chased in their live performances. It sounds like it was made with care, patience, and the last bottle of bourbon in the city.
The album opens with “Everything Old Is New Again,” a track the band describes as running into an old friend, familiar but changed. From there, ‘November Embers’ moves through a range of emotional terrain: “That Song You Wrote” traces a youthful adventure with a lingering undercurrent of loss, while “Worst Kind Of Weather” rides through the endless black spruce of northern Ontario with a trucker who might be ready to pull off the highway for good. Play that one loud.
The emotional centre of the record is “Campfire,” the song that gives the album its title, a poetic look at the memories you’d want to hold forever. Geoff’s lyrics are sad and grateful and quiet, and Mike’s guitar solo sends sparks into the night. It’s the kind of track that earns its place as the heart of a record.
Side two opens with “In Need Of Repair,” Doug’s Byrds-flavored lick leading a song about hard-won regret, before “Red Cars” brings his banjo back into the mix on a Grapes of Wrath-era portrait of riding streetcars in search of work and purpose. “Holes In My Shoes” is the band at the peak of its songwriting, folk sensibilities with pop flair, hooky lead guitar, and soaring three-part harmonies. The album closes with “Home,” an anxious, coiled build anchored by Geoff’s lyrics about a complicated but deeply loving father-daughter relationship, with a Hammond B-3 organ spot courtesy of Ottawa music legend Dave Draves.
‘November Embers’ is out now on all streaming platforms, with vinyl on the way. Like the sad-eyed bison on Doug’s album artwork, it watches the world with some apprehension and a whole lot of wonder.
‘November Embers’ Tracklist:
Everything Old Is New Again
That Song You Wrote
Worst Kind Of Weather
Campfire
There Will Be Poems
In Need Of Repair
Red Cars
Holes In My Shoes
Old Road
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