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On Let’s Be Wilderness, his new record with revolving-door project Postdata, Paul Murphy explores two conflicting certainties: we will love, and what we love will die. The frontman of beloved Nova Scotia alternative outfit Wintersleep, Murphy has built a circle of collaborators, friends, and family around him for more than a decade. Murphy first released music with Postdata in 2010, a self-titled debut that saw him working with his brother Michael to record a set of songs that dealt with family, legacy, and connection. Now, Postdata returns with Let’s Be Wilderness, a record characterized by those two old bickering friends: love and death.

The 10-track record came together much the same as Murphy’s other projects: through a community of friends and family. A vacation in Europe found Murphy ringing up friends and former tourmates Grant Hutchison and Andy Monaghan (both of Scottish indie rock triumph Frightened Rabbit). It was these meetings with old pals that birthed Let’s Be Wilderness. The cast was rounded out by Murphy’s Wintersleep bandmates Loel Campbell and Tim D’Eon, with additional work from Simone Pace (Blonde Redhead) and production from acclaimed Scottish producer Tony Doogan.

The change might discomfort some, but the rotating cast is part and parcel to Postdata; like all things, it’s never static, nor set in stone. “It can be anything,” Murphy says of Postdata. “It’s not actually really a band. It’s a project that you can work on with different people that you meet as you’re touring. You can build a record that way.”

The result is a work bursting with the sum of its parts. Sharp, succinct electronics and thunderous drums are framed around the earthy lull of Murphy’s resonant tenor, all while his familiar, rootsy acoustics drape across the record like a strand of family-favourite Christmas lights. The contemplative electro-sprawl of “Gravity” gives way to the breathy dreamscape of “Pasture,” a song sewn together from fragments of a recurring dream. “Evil” bursts in with a romping, harmonious gospel stomp, while closer “Windows” is an intimate, candle-light ballad with just Murphy and his guitar. For all the record’s trials, it parts with a gentle declaration: “I won’t walk away from you now,” Murphy says gently.

It becomes clear that a sort of manifest destiny threads through Let’s Be Wilderness. As Murphy wrestles with the pendulum-swing of hope and despair, pondering what will become of the two, he’s created an analogue for those theoretical queries: a transient project created from community, rooted in empathy, guided by love.