From the quiet corners of a Nova Scotia night, Jont’s “Let’s Just Be Friends” emerges as a tender, nocturnal meditation on love and truth – a song that drifts between dreamy romanticism and grounded self-awareness. Vulnerable and timeless, it’s a story of connection that was perhaps always destined to burn bright and fade, leaving behind the bittersweet beauty of understanding.

“Late at night, sat up in bed with my guitar, is how some of my best songs have come,” Jont shares. “Maybe it was always thus for songwriters – Cohen, Dylan – the muse sitting beside them as the world sleeps. And with my cats Oscar and Buttons beside me, I can be found there too, up late, lights low, guitar in my lap, writing something that’s sprung out of me without warning and demanding my attention.”

“You don’t have to be a genius to work out it’s a love song,” he continues. “And an autobiographical one at that. Sincere too in its message – or maybe not sincere in the desire to stay as just friends. Just true in what it says about what happens when you don’t.”

What follows is a song suspended in that liminal space between longing and surrender. “Right now the world is asleep, it’s just you and me counting sheep, we can’t afford to miss a beat, or no-one’ll know how many there have been…” Jont sings in the chorus – a lyric that captures the fleeting, dizzying joy of new connection, even as the verses quietly predict its impermanence.

“Sometimes it seems the songs know before I do how things are going to go,” Jont reflects. “But we haven’t learnt the lesson until we’ve had enough of the pain. And though over the years the pain might have seemed almost too much to bear, it has also led directly to more fruitful evenings — sat up late at night, guitar in lap, as emotions alchemise and dissolve into a subtle and radiant joy.”