"We’re all pretty jaded and bored. But sometimes we’re not," says Sean MacDonald. This is how the former Ids vocalist dove into his solo career with his religiously inspired album Parasites and Kings.
MacDonald found enlightenment, and on this album he wants to share that which affected him. One might automatically assume MacDonald to be an extreme Christian by taking a quick glance at the list of songs on his album. Such titles as "God" and "God is Smiling" insinuate a strong religious conviction but that isn’t what MacDonald is about.
"When I was writing this album I was going through something religious, although I can’t really say what," he says of his folk-pop album. "It didn’t really involve any holy books or any sort of religion. I can’t call it by a name, it just happened."
MacDonald says it is easy to be enlightened in a place like B.C.’s Hornby Island. However, MacDonald was enveloped by anything but holiness when he wrote the Vancouver-set "God," where he sings, "God lives on Hastings Street/God lives on Robson/God lives on the moon/God lives in the corners of my room."
Being surrounded by hookers, johns and a chicken factory "where the stench of dead chicken always permeates the air" inspired MacDonald to write "God."
"The strangest things can bring it on," says MacDonald, who plays the Liberty Lounge and SAIT Thurs., Oct. 5. "I don’t know even when or where it’s going to happen, but it happens, and it’s so fleeting because for a split second you’re one of the enlightened ones. You’re like Buddha."