Shane Tutmarc, known as Dolour, crafted one of 2023’s most infectious tunes with “Have I Finally Gone Insane.” Now, he unveils a brand-new album titled “Daylight Upon Magic,” brimming with similarly sophisticated, irresistible tracks produced to contemporary standards. Prepare for a dose of hyper-classy power pop melodies.

Dive into the story behind this sonic bliss and stay tuned for the world premiere of the visually captivating video for “Judging By The Moon And The Stars.”

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You can find ‘Sun On My Brain’ showcased on the Best Power Pop of 2024 Spotify Playlist.

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New record, new opportunities. What were the lessons you learned to make this record even better?

The ultimate lesson is being true to yourself. With every record, I try to be honest with where I am musically and lyrically, but that is always changing and evolving. Being in tune with myself is a daily lesson to be learned. I see a lot of themes in this record about survival and perseverance. Even a song like “Moves Like Miyagi,” which sounds kind of silly at first glance, is really about lessons I’ve learned over the years about survival. It definitely has been hitting me lately how long I’ve been on this artist’s path and trying to understand and communicate better what the purpose of this journey is.

I think an overall lesson I’m always learning is “less is more.” My instinct is usually to pile on more and more ideas on top of ideas, and with this record, I was really conscious of only keeping things that felt necessary. Making sure only things that were adding to the experience were left in.

There were also a lot of technical lessons learned throughout the making of this record. As usual, I played all the instruments and engineered and mixed the album. So there’s always more to learn about all that. I also mastered the album, which was new to me. I’ve never mastered a full album, and it was a lot of work getting to the point where I felt like I had a handle on that. I probably watched more YouTube tutorials in those final weeks than anyone has ever watched. But I’m not sure if I learned much from any of them. Ultimately I just had to accept that, beyond the songs and the musicianship, this record will be a representation of where I am at with my technical skills.

Have you had any reactions from the people around you? Which comment was nice to hear? Why does this record make you proud?

I haven’t shared the finished album with anyone except my wife so far. When I finished the album, I sat her down, and we listened to it together. I hadn’t shared a lot of it with her throughout the making of it, so she was hearing most of it for the first time. She was really enthusiastic, and she can be a pretty tough critic, so it felt good that she dug it. Personally, I found myself becoming overwhelmed with pride for the album during its final weeks of recording and mixing. I feel like it’s an album full of interesting ideas, musically and lyrically. I think I captured a lot of myself on this album. The album brings together so many things I love about music and my feelings about life. There’s a little bit of everything on the album, which is what I like. Variety.

What was the song that took you by surprise?

“Moves Like Miyagi” was a surprise. I started writing it as a funny little song that I was singing to myself, but as it developed, it took on deeper meanings for me. My process with songwriting usually starts with a big burst of creative energy where I almost blackout and can’t remember later how it happened, so they all are little surprise gifts.

When did you know you were going to release an album instead of singles?

An eventual album was always the plan. After making three albums in less than two years with The Royal We (2020), Televangelist (2021), and Origin Story (2021), I knew I wanted to take a little breather. But even though I wanted to take a break, I kept writing. And then around Spring ’22, I got an offer to write a song for a movie, and I wrote “The Comeback Kid” for that. The movie opportunity fell through, but I had a finished song, so I put the song out as a single, thinking that I would soon have an album finished to follow that up with. But then I kept writing. And each time I released another single, I kept writing more, and the new songs kept replacing older songs, and that process continued until I released “Sun On My Brain” last Fall. At that point, I had the track-listing finished for the album, and everything was about 80% done. But unlike the three albums I made during Covid lockdown, this time I had to balance the schedule of my day-to-day life, and it was a lot more challenging to find the time to put in that crucial final 20%. I finally had the opportunity in March and early April to get everything finished up and ended up reworking all the singles I had already released. So even folks who followed my single releases the last couple of years will hear new things in all those songs.

What was the first thing you thought of this morning when your thoughts turned to the new record?

My thoughts are mostly on hoping the songs find the right people. I know how helpful music has been in my life, and I would love for these songs to be helpful in any way to other people’s lives.