The Great Now (2026)
Andrew Champion took five years to make this debut EP. After a biking accident, a surgery to save a finger, a new baby, an audio engineering degree, a home studio, and a lot of chipping away, Champion finally releases his passion project. You don’t need to know any of that to appreciate The Great Now, but it’s hard not to hear it once you do. This is a project that sounds like someone who had time to figure out what he actually wanted to say, and then said it without any regret.
The City Feels is Champion’s Toronto-based solo project, and the sound lands somewhere between classic indie rock and 80s new wave. Slight deadpan vocal delivery, leathery and deep, more range than you expect. Think Matt Berninger, Robbie Grey, or even Ian Curtis, but with more warmth and less whiskey. The new wave influence isn’t a costume. It’s genuinely in the voice, in the guitar tones, in the way the songs are arranged.
The EP opens with its title track, The City Feels (like home), and the first thing you notice is the backing vocals. His wife is on harmonies throughout the record, and on this track especially, that choice carries weight. Those harmonies sound like they come from someone who loves both the record and the person who made it. You can’t fake that. The arrangement is straightforward: a soft, driving intro that builds without much fuss. The new wave elements are subtle here, living mostly in the lower register of the vocal. The horns that arrive near the end are the track’s best moment. They don’t overstay. They just make the song feel fuller than it had any right to.
Not Tonight is where the new wave commitment gets a bit more explicit and the EP finds another gear. The guitar tone is brighter and more clipped, Modern English territory, and the bass drives underneath with real urgency. The back-and-forth between lead and secondary vocals is one of the strongest artistic choices on the EP. The lyrics are about paralysis, about having the words and not being able to get them out, and the call-and-response structure mirrors that perfectly. I could move mountains with my words / and it terrifies me. Catchy, dynamic, and fully committed to its own sound.
Sleep In is the most mid-2000s radio rock moment on the record. Think Snow Patrol or The Goo Goo Dolls, with that warm melodic space. The lyrics are physically specific in a way the other tracks aren’t: a morning scene, someone still asleep, the slow quiet realization that the simple things got genuinely good. I wouldn’t have become the man that I’ve become if you weren’t here. That’s not a subtle line, but subtlety isn’t what the song is going for. It’s going for honesty.
Then comes Young Again, and this is the one. The new wave vocal delivery is fully deployed, the energy is dynamic in a way the earlier tracks build toward, and the horns aren’t decorating. They’re driving. They push the chorus forward rather than sitting above it. The guitar riff is confident, and the first proper solo on the EP arrives with a tone warm enough that it feels like a reward rather than a display. The lyric holds the past and the present in the same breath without mourning either. Here’s to the nights we felt the most alive / here’s to the days we swore we won’t survive. And the second verse quietly does something smart: now I’d cry if I could sleep in. If you’ve been paying attention, that line lands harder because Sleep In exists one track earlier. Now that’s an EP with a spine.
Myself Again closes the record in a mode that pulls from both Modern English and early U2. Wide, searching, hymnal without the church commitment. The chorus image of picking up the pieces and putting gold along the broken parts is the most deliberate piece of writing on the record, and the music gives it enough room to breathe. The bridge, can you find a way back to where the feeling starts, doesn’t resolve. The record ends with someone still mid-reassembly rather than fully arrived, which gives The Great Now a more honest shape than the title alone might suggest.
For a debut, this is impressively put together. The production is clean for a home studio record, the horn arrangements show real taste, and the backing vocal presence throughout is warm in a way that money can’t manufacture. Five tracks, no filler, no weak link. Champion knows what kind of artist he is. That’s rarer than it should be for a first release. The world should catch up quickly.
