Alex Henry Foster Releases 'From the City to the Ocean'
Alex Henry Foster, the Montreal-based musician/author/entrepreneur and former frontman of the band Your Favorite Enemies, today released an EP with three different variations of the song From The City To The Ocean. Your Favorite Enemies originally released the track in 2014 on their album Between Illness and Migration, which earned a nomination for “Rock Album of the Year” at Canada’s Juno Award and was a Music Canada Certified Gold album.
Foster wrote From The City To The Ocean based on the opening line of the poem “Man and The Sea” by 19th century French poet Charles-Pierre Baudelaire: ““Free man, you will always love the sea.”
“I have always been fascinated by the nature of the sea, the ocean, its redeeming grace and its implacable power, its freedom of movement,” said Foster. “I almost drowned as a kid. Maybe that’s where the fascination goes back to. It’s paradoxical because I’m truly the product of a big city. I grew up in what looks like huge soulless apartment complexes, which for me reflected the same nature as the ocean somehow… Where can you drown yourself? Where can you find yourself suffocating? Where can you lose yourself choking? For me, there was a very intriguing parallel between the two elements.”
The EP released today begins with a four and a half minute newly recorded studio version of the song, followed by a live rehearsal version (the Upper Room Rehearsal) and a version recorded live at the venue De Kouter in Bocholt, Belgium on November 16, 2025 and released in physical form on Record Store Day last month, with the 200 copies selling out in less than 2 hours.
Foster will return to Europe this fall with his Defying Gravity tour. Dates kick off November 26 in Munich and extend through December 12 in Paris with stops throughout Switzerland, Poland, additional German dates, and The Netherlands. A full list of dates are below.
Foster will soon reveal a new project on the horizon for 2026 and beyond.
