On Small Town Rituals, Canada-born, Byron Bay-based singer-songwriter Garrett Kato finds inspiration in the small but complex details of everyday life. There are the long-distance phone calls searching for advice and a friendly voice in “Telephone”, the desire to escape the boredom and trouble of small-town life in “Drugstore Houses” and the pain of losing friends to suicide in “Secrets”. Kato encases these fragile ruminations in a warm, intimate indie-folk shell, his honeyed vocals belying the troubled waters in which some of these songs were born. An accomplished producer whose credits include work with Angus & Julia Stone, Pete Murray and Busby Marou, Kato self-produced his third full-length in his home studio, adding to the sense that we’re eavesdropping on a series of quiet conversations he is having with himself. A cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, with its measured take on troubled relationships, fits right in.