Molly Drag teases third long-player with the emotionally weighty "Glass"

The solo project of Michael Hansford, Molly Drag has been putting out music for a couple of years, with two quality bedroom slowcore long players (2014's Deeply Flawed and last year's Tethered Rendering).

A new album Whatever Reason is released next week and is teased today by its creative and emotional centrepiece ​"Glass".

​It's a song that deals with the fragility of being emotionally sensitive, explains Hansford, "and wanting people close to you to not push you away because of it, but to understand it, and welcome who you are." ​

"I have about six different versions of 'Glass'," he says. "One with electronic drums, one just electric piano and vocals, and what ended up being the final version I feel was the exponential step to this project having its own sound [and] shaping the record."

The song also weaves in ​samples from a documentary Hansford found on YouTube about his hometown of Midland, Ontario. One of the oldest Canadian townships, Midland also produced indie four piece Born Ruffians. Hansford was born there to a mother who, like her two siblings, was adopted. His father lived on the boats of Hudson Bay for four month stretches, transferring grain and iron from Quebec to Ontario. "I've always been around water," says Hansford.

Experimenting with recordings from the age of 14, the teenage Hansford was obsessed with Radiohead, R.E.M. and Coldplay until he was gifted ( ) by Sigur Rós' one Christmas. The record transformed his approach to songwriting.

Hansford mostly lived with his mother and grandmother in his teenage years, he tells me: "I was influenced by immense femininity and learned to be nurturing. My mother and grandmother taught me so much."

With just one USB microphone, GarageBand and Audacity, Whatever Reason was recorded throughout last year at Hansford's old house in London, Ontario - a building known as "Heavens Gate". Decamping there after recovering from a 20-foot fall following a show at Shea Stadium in Brooklyn, he also turned it into a venue, putting on shows for the likes of Chastity, Vundabar and Island of Misfit Toys. For half of each day Hansford recorded - putting every instrument down himself. ​"I was trying to focus less on adding so many layers like my previous records but more towards creating a simple song, with every track," he says.

He calls Whatever Reason his first concept record. "Having everything you adore so close to you, but you're caught in a straight jacket of figuring yourself out first," he says. "Personally, I've dealt with suicidal thoughts and body dysmorphia for many years now, this album have a lot to do about these, but I talk about them as dreams."

"I want to stress that I am not romanticizing these concepts, but simply putting them into my own personal catharsis."