Potions - Beebo, Make a Wish
Idée Fixe
Released on June 26th, 2026
Living in Sackville, NB, means I get to experience the magic of Sappyfest annually, a not-for-profit music festival that’s been running for twenty-one years. Before the fest, I try to listen to every artist added to the schedule. That’s how I discovered the Toronto-based free/freak folk quartet, Potions. Typically, I listen to an album and move on to the next, wanting to hear everything on offer. But with Potions, I kept listening. It is, by far, the album I’ve listened to the most this summer. I was in from the moment I heard the opening guitars and the delicate, almost whispered vocals. These songs and their performance feel urgent; it is as if they were recorded moments before I pressed play.
Beebo, Make a Wish is the band’s debut album, consisting of nineteen tracks chosen from thirty tapes the band made in just under a week at a cottage in Lac Chaud, Quebec, using equipment borrowed from friends and family. This outstanding feat of creative output is even more impressive because of the quality of songwriting and musicianship on display throughout the album.
It's difficult to put into words what makes this band and album so affecting. The collage-like quality of “Beebo” seems to call for a similarly fitting, abstract impression - an attempt to capture what Potions is. On their Bandcamp page, a user named “asher infinity” aptly states:
“Songs imbued with love, no doubt. There's some perfect analogy that I can't make.. A glimpse into an ocean, a bite of apple pie, when eyes blur and one becomes two, an olive door, the first meeting of new friends, electricity, the word tempest, a place to hide, a world you knew and can only know as a child, the innate desire to notice, getting lost, being found, a joy that can only be felt through sadness, the magic of a crystal ball, making a wish.”
Those sentiments capture the essence of Potions and their debut record. I, too, find myself searching for a perfect analogy. I find it difficult to put into words what my brain and body experience while listening to Potions. A pining, nostalgic memory that never existed keeps coming to mind. These dreamlike abstractions are what keep me coming back to Beebo, Make a Wish.
The opening track “Havelock” starts mellow with a quiet guitar riff and a gentle vocal before mild, distorted guitar accompanies the heavier chorus as the singer breaks through with a strained cry that reminds me of the earliest offerings from one of my most cherished songwriters, the late, great Richard Laviolette.
The next track is a thirteen-second snippet that underscores the album’s fragmentary nature. These short moments are scattered throughout the record’s thirty-seven-minute runtime - brief, musical ”sidequests” that never feel like a distraction; rather, they are intriguing samples of the band’s versatility and make me eager to dig into all of the tapes they made during their recording session.
“New When” is a gorgeous tune, driven by a guitar arrangement that is a little too complicated to make it a straight-up folk song. Like the album at large, the lyrics, too, are poetic fragments -
“Highway terrafrom / Gas tank light flickers / Backroad emptiness / I’m no stranger pull me out.”
Towards the end, there’s a beautiful, three-part harmony, showcasing the band’s ability to slow down and capture time, twenty seconds of prescience that can thankfully be replayed and not just remembered.
As I continue listening, something interesting starts happening. That analogy I’ve been searching for is right in front of me. That feeling I’ve been trying to describe is on the tip of my tongue.
Seven tracks in, there’s a morsel of a song, a “Cool Intro,” where the band can be heard messing around with some electronic instruments while a stovetop kettle boils eagerly in the background. At this moment, I’m in a small cottage in Quebec, as Potions attempt to make 40 albums in a week. I’m a fly on the wall as they effortlessly improvise a cacophonous intro and verse on “120 > 35” before shuffling brushes on a snare drum carry them into the chorus. I’m crying along with the car and the violin on “Car Cried,” and I’m in the kitchen when one of them asks to be reminded to run the dishwasher before playfully tripping into a virtuosic instrumental on “Bug Jar.” As they secretly record their bandmate singing “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and covertly try to harmonize and play along with him, I find myself laughing and singing along, in on the joke. I’m a co-conspirator, a friend, a part of the band. I’m speechless as they cut “Still Life” to tape, possibly the most breathtaking song on the entire record, with a lyrical tone rivaling one of the best songwriters of our time, Adrienne Lenker.
On “Beebo, Make a Wish,” Potions have fulfilled a wish I didn’t know I had by inviting me to be part of their art, as participant and listener, friend and observer, watching these four souls capture lightning in a bottle. No, Potions are the lightning and the bottle. They are the kettle, and the vibrating molecules within that can transform from one state to another. They are alchemists gathering ingredients and manifesting something brilliant and new where there was nothing moments before.
Another Bandcamp listener, “andrewchiappetta,” states it simply, but I agree wholeheartedly -
“Life is beautiful and love is everywhere and I think if you don't hear that from this record then you won't hear it from anywhere.”