President’s Choice: Feeling Soothed 

Peppermint, Ginger, and Fennel. 

Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon tea break with our Afternoon Tea curators. 

Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by Basset.

Toronto-based folk duo, Basset, are full of timeless heart. Acoustic songwriters Sam Clark and Yasmine Shelton will take you from a beekeeper’s fields to the haunted basement of a second-hand store, in a style that is all their own. 

Their latest single, “In the Clay,” reflects on the harm they’ve caused and the ways in which the duo have grown, even within darkness. Patient fingerpicked guitar and vocal harmonies trace explorations of the wilderness transfigured through the reality of living in a basement apartment throughout much of the pandemic.

The band pushed themselves mentally and physically as a way of trying to make the most of that time spent in relative isolation, creating a meditative and healing new song in the process.

Producer and director Monica Thi explains that “In the Clay” explores the proximity of internal healing, reflected through the distance between our inner selves, and the closeness in space amongst each other. This yearning for connection is perceived through two characters who are going through parallel worlds of healing, woven to coexist in one shared timeline. Whatever happens here impacts nature over there. How do we meet again?

Tea: President’s Choice: Feeling Soothed 

Peppermint, Ginger, and Fennel. 

This tea works like its name. From the first time I tried it, the combination of the warm spicy ginger, the cooling peppermint, and the grassy breeze of fennel has gone down in a rush of calm. 

Visual: Unnamed painting by Thelia Sanders-Shelton

We put this painting up on our dining room wall just over a week ago and with being away from home, this was the first time I got to sit and spend any length of time really taking it in. Initially, it was the vibrancy of the colours that struck me but in looking at it longer it hit me that there is a very strong feeling of being settled, of the figures being exactly where they were meant to be, home and held. 

Song: Hold me Like a Fire by Reuben And The Dark

The name of this song (Hold Me Like a Fire by Reuben and The Dark), like the combined spice and breeze of the tea, and the passionate belonging of the painting, embodied that balance of energy and calm. In listening, the powerful lead vocals strike off on their own but come back to settle in a rousing and comforting refrain of “hold me like a fire and hold me like a river”.