Nova Scotia indie folk project Clever Hopes traces the fragile space between grief and love on “Fumbled Dreams” ft. Jenn Grant, a gently radiant song that carries the ache of miscarriage through lilting harmonies, glowing melodies, and the enduring tenderness of two people learning how to hold loss together.
Stream: “Fumbled Dreams” – Clever Hopes
Grief and joy don’t politely wait for the other to leave the room.
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Grief doesn’t always sound the way we expect it to.
Sometimes it arrives on music that lifts and sways, carrying pain inside a melody bright enough to keep moving.
Clever Hopes’ bittersweet folk rock song “Fumbled Dreams,” featuring Jenn Grant, lives inside that fragile distance, wrapping the aftermath of a miscarriage in jangling guitars, lilting harmonies, and an arrangement whose buoyancy keeps reaching toward the light. The song’s deepest tenderness belongs to the act of staying close through helplessness, holding love and sorrow in the same hands as life moves forward.
We took the midnight special
Straight across the basin
Just as soon as we were able
Past the thistles and carnation
You cracked the back the window
Cast a laugh across the water
The weeping golden willows
They all wept a little harder
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the music video for “Fumbled Dreams,” Clever Hopes’ stirring collaboration with Jenn Grant. The song appears on Even Gooder Than Tomorrow, Andrew Shaver’s third album under the Clever Hopes moniker, released September 18. Written across years marked by immense joy and profound heartbreak, the record repeatedly brings grief and wonder into the same room – a tension “Fumbled Dreams” carries with particular grace.
Its first lines took shape in a taxi crossing Halifax’s Macdonald Bridge. Shaver and his partner, Mel, had left a Nathaniel Rateliff concert after realizing she was miscarrying, and the ride home gave the song both its opening image and its emotional center. What emerged wasn’t simply an account of loss, but a portrait of two people trying to remain beside one another while experiencing the same devastating event from their own places within it.
“We left and took a taxi home, and as we crossed the Macdonald Bridge, CCR’s version of ‘The Midnight Special’ came on the radio, and that basically became the opening lyric: ‘We took the midnight special / straight across the basin,’” Shaver tells Atwood Magazine.
“The song began during that ride, but it became less about the loss itself than about two people going through it together. Sometimes the only comfort you can offer each other is the knowledge that neither of you is carrying it alone.”
Musically, “Fumbled Dreams” carries the weight of its story with remarkable lightness.
Shaver’s acoustic guitar sits inside a lush, gently jangling arrangement of electric guitars, keys, bass, drums, and percussion, while layers of background vocals ripple through the mix. There is sweetness everywhere in the recording – in its easy sway, its melodic brightness, and the way the voices gather around one another – yet none of it asks the grief at its center to recede.
Jenn Grant arrives at the song’s most piercing moment, taking up the words that came directly from Mel: “My heart is just aching / I never really knew what that meant.” Her lilting vocal cuts through the arrangement with startling intimacy.
“Jenn’s voice allowed the song to become a conversation rather than one person’s account. I wasn’t asking her to play Mel, but I wanted another voice to carry words that didn’t originate with me,” Shaver says. “Jenn brings such a beautiful combination of strength and vulnerability. When she enters, the song opens up and the experience feels shared.”
The chorus brings the distance between them into focus:
Side by side
One up and one down
With the weight of it all
Spinning around
In the space between
You and me
And all our fumbled dreams
“Side by side” becomes the crucial phrase. They are together, but never perfectly aligned; one rises while the other falls, each carrying the same event from a different emotional position. Even the title resists finality.
“A fumble isn’t necessarily the end of the play. It can be recovered. Maybe not in the form you first imagined, but something can still be gathered up and carried forward, perhaps even more beautifully,” Shaver shares. “The fact that you dropped it doesn’t make the hope behind it foolish or the attempt meaningless.”
Directed by Daniel Ledwell, the “Fumbled Dreams” video unfolds in Shaver’s own living room, where toys, books, clothes, and blocks surround him and Grant.
The domestic clutter remains fully visible, giving the performance the texture of an ordinary day at home.
“Loss doesn’t remain preserved in the saddest room of your life. It follows you into the life that continues afterward,” Shaver explains. “The chaos isn’t incidental scenery. It’s evidence of that continuation, with grief sharing a room with play and noise and, just, life.”
Ledwell keeps the camera locked off as multiple versions of Shaver and Grant appear within the same frame, an understated visual trick that gives the otherwise familiar room an increasingly surreal quality.
“[It] felt like a simple way of suggesting memory, grief, and all the different emotional selves a song like this can hold,” Shaver says.
“It felt true to grief. You can be the person carrying the memory, the person trying to function and the person laughing at something stupid, all within a few minutes. Jenn brought a playfulness I hadn’t entirely anticipated in the video, and I love how it undercuts the pain without dismissing it. The video allows sadness, humour and ordinary life to share the frame.”
Even Gooder Than Tomorrow takes its name from Shaver’s eldest son, Auden, who emerged from his second day of pre-primary and declared it had been “even gooder than tomorrow.”
The phrase lends the album a childlike openness to the present, even as its songs contend with futures that changed shape along the way.
“The record is about endings and beginnings, false starts, long ways round and second chances,” Shaver says. “‘Fumbled Dreams’ sits near its emotional centre, exploring the distance between where we thought we were going and where we landed, and the decision to keep living and loving from that new place. The album is ultimately about holding on, letting go and showing up anyway.”
My heart is just aching
I never really knew what that meant
I can’t believe that this happened
At all and now again
We lean into the shadows
In the darkness under covers
On shoulders and on pillows
We hold tight to each other
By the end of “Fumbled Dreams,” the distance between the life once imagined and the life that followed has become a place people can inhabit together. The melody keeps moving, the voices stay beside one another, and the video fills the frame with a home still unfolding around the memory.
“Making the record didn’t resolve the things that inspired it. Songs aren’t magic in that way,” Shaver reflects. “But the songs do give those experiences a shape and they allow me to share some of their weight with people I love. What I’ve taken from the process is that showing up doesn’t always look heroic. Sometimes it’s simply being present, making something and then trying again tomorrow.”
Side by side
One up and one down
With the weight of it all
Kept us spinning around
In the space between
You and Me
And all our fumbled dreams
Released September 18, Even Gooder Than Tomorrow carries that persistence through a collection shaped by lives that rarely unfold according to plan. “Fumbled Dreams” meets one of Shaver’s most painful memories with music full of movement and companionship, letting grief sound like the life continuing around it – sorrow still present, love still making room for tomorrow.
Watch Atwood Magazine’s premiere of “Fumbled Dreams” below, and read on as Clever Hopes’ Andrew Shaver takes us deeper into the song, its video, and the world of Even Gooder Than Tomorrow.
So now I sip
A sadness from your lips
And I breathe deep
Into the space between
You and me
You and me
You and me
In the space between
All our fumbled dreams
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:: stream/purchase Even Gooder Than Tomorrow here ::
:: connect with Clever Hopes here ::
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Stream: ‘Even Gooder Than Tomorrow’ – Clever Hopes
A CONVERSATION WITH CLEVER HOPES
Atwood Magazine: For those who are just discovering Clever Hopes today, what do you want them to know about you and your music?
Clever Hopes (Andrew Shaver): I have a slightly unruly working life. Alongside making records as Clever Hopes, I’m an actor, director, radio host, therapeutic clown and, of particular importance to this album, a father. All of those hats are connected by the same curiosity about people and the stories we carry. My songs generally live somewhere in the folk and Americana world, exploring relationships, fatherhood, loss, self-doubt and the distance between the lives we imagined and the ones we find ourselves living. They’re personal, but the records are deeply collaborative and become much more interesting through the people who play and sing on them.
“Fumbled Dreams” is about the ache of a shared loss, and the fragile space between two people trying to hold each other through it. What’s the story behind this song?
Clever Hopes: Mel and I were at a Nathaniel Rateliff concert in Halifax when she realized she was miscarrying. We left and took a taxi home, and as we crossed the Macdonald Bridge, CCR’s version of “The Midnight Special” came on the radio, and that basically became the opening lyric: “We took the midnight special / straight across the basin.” The song began during that ride, but it became less about the loss itself than about two people going through it together. Sometimes the only comfort you can offer each other is the knowledge that neither of you is carrying it alone.
You’ve shared that “Fumbled Dreams” began after your partner miscarried, and that the line “My heart’s just aching / I never really knew what that meant” came almost directly from what she said afterward. How did you know this was something you wanted, or needed, to carry into a song?
Clever Hopes: I knew immediately that those words belonged in a song. I’ve noticed that during some of the saddest moments of my life, I’ve felt almost split in two. My body is there in the moment, feeling all of it, and then, all of sudden, a word or a phrase rings and stands apart from everything else. It’s not that I go looking for them. They just kind of arrive. Then the tricky part is knowing I want them to stick around while remaining entirely present in the moment. Mel’s words were so plain and so devastating that they became the emotional centre of the song. Because they were hers, and because the loss was ours, I knew I had to carry them carefully. I didn’t want the song to become me claiming the whole experience as my own.
You’ve said this was a shared loss, and that it never felt like a story your voice should tell alone. What did Jenn Grant’s voice allow the song to hold?
Clever Hopes: Jenn’s voice allowed the song to become a conversation rather than one person’s account. I wasn’t asking her to play Mel, but I wanted another voice to carry words that didn’t originate with me. Jenn brings such a beautiful combination of strength and vulnerability. When she enters, the song opens up and the experience feels shared.
The phrase “fumbled dreams” feels so human to me, like grief, love, disappointment and tenderness all caught in the same hands. What does that phrase mean to you?
Clever Hopes: I think of fumbled dreams as the things we genuinely wanted and tried to hold onto but couldn’t, sometimes because of our mistakes, sometimes because life had other plans. There’s failure in the phrase, but not blame, and a fumble isn’t necessarily the end of the play. It can be recovered. Maybe not in the form you first imagined, but something can still be gathered up and carried forward, perhaps even more beautifully. The fact that you dropped it doesn’t make the hope behind it foolish or the attempt meaningless.
I’m struck by the lyric, “In the space between / you and me / and all our fumbled dreams.” What were you trying to capture in that “space between”?
Clever Hopes: Even when a loss is shared, it doesn’t necessarily land in two people the same way or even really at the same time. That space is the silence, and helplessness, and distance that can open between you, but it’s also where the love lives. The song isn’t about working to close that gap so much as it about just staying beside someone while it’s there.
The video places the song in your living room, surrounded by the real-life chaos of parenthood. Why was that the right setting for this song?
Clever Hopes: Because that’s where the song lives now: in a house full of children, toys, laundry, books, half-finished projects. Loss doesn’t remain preserved in the saddest room of your life. It follows you into the life that continues afterward. The chaos isn’t incidental scenery. It’s evidence of that continuation, with grief sharing a room with play and noise and, just, life.
You and director Daniel Ledwell use a locked-off camera to show multiple versions of you and Jenn existing in the same frame. How did that visual approach help you express memory, grief and the different emotional selves inside the song?
Clever Hopes: It felt true to grief. You can be the person carrying the memory, the person trying to function and the person laughing at something stupid, all within a few minutes. Jenn brought a playfulness I hadn’t entirely anticipated in the video, and I love how it undercuts the pain without dismissing it. The video allows sadness, humour and ordinary life to share the frame.
How does “Fumbled Dreams” open up the larger emotional world of Even Gooder Than Tomorrow?
Clever Hopes: The record is about endings and beginnings, false starts, long ways round and second chances. “Fumbled Dreams” sits near its emotional centre, exploring the distance between where we thought we were going and where we landed, and the decision to keep living and loving from that new place. The album is ultimately about holding on, letting go and showing up anyway.
What do you hope listeners and viewers take away from “Fumbled Dreams” and Even Gooder Than Tomorrow, and what have you taken away from creating this music?
Clever Hopes: I hope people find some part of their own experience inside it. Maybe it offers company to someone who has known this kind of loss, or helps someone understand that grief and joy don’t politely wait for the other to leave the room.
Making the record didn’t resolve the things that inspired it. Songs aren’t magic in that way. But the songs do give those experiences a shape and they allow me to share some of their weight with people I love. What I’ve taken from the process is that showing up doesn’t always look heroic. Sometimes it’s simply being present, making something and then trying again tomorrow.
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:: stream/purchase Even Gooder Than Tomorrow here ::
:: connect with Clever Hopes here ::
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Stream: “Fumbled Dreams” – Clever Hopes
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