The sideman is a well-worn musical trope: the diligent and often mysterious musician (generally a guitarist) playing creative foil to the more celebrated front-person. With a career spanning two decades, Dean Drouillard has cultivated just such an image in Canadian music, plying his complementary trade for a laundry list of established Canadian artists that reads like a CBC radio 2 playlist. Stints with Sarah Harmer, Rose Cousins, Royal Wood, Amelia Curran, and Great Lake Swimmers have cemented his reputation as a go-to musician and first-call guitarist who’s as comfortable in studio as he is on the road. But in between tours and recording sessions, Drouillard has maintained a consistent artistic output, producing a half-dozen releases under his own name since 1998. His recordings bely a curious and artistic imperative but his compositions remain melodic and approachable. From the mid-fi melancholy of Dust, to the cinematic instrumental vistas of Bear Lake, Drouillard’s catalogue denotes a restless exploration, each release refining his sound without redundancy. Drouillard’s latest, Flood, is his rangiest yet, as Teenage Fanclub-inspired pop sensibilities collide with blown-out shoegaze textures, slo-core laments bleed into 90’s top 40 Tom Petty folkpop. A dynamic record that surveys the diverse interests of a musical mind still hungry to stake new territory.