Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, Blush. is the New Music Monday highlight!
The band has been playing together for only six months with the full lineup of Anton Wilson on guitar and vocals, Eric Josephs on drums, Renata Baldwin on keys and Rosie Said on bass.
In that time they have managed to record and release their first EP, Still Wet.
This EP is a nostalgia-fueled take on shoegaze and alternative indie rock that has been a favourite on the CFUV airwaves since its February release.
The band started with Wilsons and Josephs before getting a couple of their coworkers in on the Blush., as all four members work at The Courtney Room in downtown Victoria.
According to Wilson, Still Wet was inspired by music he had been writing on acoustic guitar before he had help from the rest of the band on fleshing out a fuller sound.
“I’ll kind of come to the band with an idea for a song and it’s actually really cool to see how they transfer from acoustic to plugged in with distortion,” Wilson told Victoria Buzz.
Wilson says he was listening to a lot of acoustic focussed artists such as Big Thief and Alex G as well as melodic “floaty and ethereal” bands like Built to Spill while writing Still Wet and that sound really translates to the EP.
With their first release, the band said they really just wanted to get something out there and even though they love these songs and continue to play them in their live set, they feel as if they have already grown so much since their February release.
“It really felt like a timestamp situation,” Wilson said.
“They aren’t exactly who we are now, but that’s who we were and we just wanted to capture that.”
Josephs and Wilson decided that of the songs they recorded on Still Wet, they wanted to highlight “Software Update.”
“We wrote this song when we first started jamming and it was such a bad song,” Wilson laughed.
He says the lyrics were not resonating with himself or the band and it was too fast when they wrote it, so the band decided to take it back to the drawing board.
Wilson and Josephs worked together to slow the song down by coming up with a slower drum beat and then Wilson says he got a new pedal that offered his guitar tone additional delay and reverb.
As for the lyrics, Wilson completely rewrote them and set the song in a different direction.
“I really wanted to capture Victoria with it,” he said.
“I wanted it to be more chill, laid back, you know, take it in, I just kind of pictured being by the water.”
Themes of rebirth also worked their way into this song which Blush. says is ultimately what they wanted Still Wet to be about—as if the band is still wet from being reborn as a group through this project.
They also say that they are really proud of the song “a snail house for big dog.”
“I think that one is a cool song to pick out of the EP as well because it is very indicative of the music we’re playing more recently,” Josephs explained.
“It’s a lot more rock and roll maybe.”
Josephs says that in their earlier written songs he was hitting the drums softly to compliment the more folk-focussed songs, but with “a snail house for big dog” he gets to hit a bit harder and the dynamics of their songs change.
“It’s like woah, this is fun, this is cool—look at how much space this makes and how we can open it all up,” said Josephs.
“It was a fun song to tape and I think it’s a lot more the style of music we’re playing now.”
Listen to Blush.’s debut EP, Still Wet below:
If you like what you hear, you can find Blush.’s music in full on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music.
Blush. will be playing a couple shows this summer after taking a short hiatus in May to tighten up some songs and work in order to get back in the studio whenever they have the opportunity.
In June, they are heading up-island to play a show at Tofino Brewing Company on the 27th, but before that, they’ll be playing a smaller show here in Victoria on June 7th at Little Fernwood Gallery.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Sofia Miller harnesses confidence in debut album ‘Prologue’
- New Music Monday: Neighbourly gets experimental with new post-punk EP, ‘Outside 311’
- New Music Monday: Frances Hope releases ‘Breakup Songs’ EP about love and loss
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
Both Wilson and Josephs say that CFUV is a huge part of the Victoria music community and that they couldn’t be dining what they are dining without a resource like them.
“CFUV is a staple in our community for live music,” Wilson told Victoria Buzz. “They’ve taken us in with open arms and been really encouraging to us.”
“They’ve taken the time to uplift such a broken music community here in Victoria.”
He also says that he believes there will be a revival of the music scene since so many venues have been lost and that CFUV will be at the forefront of that revival because of their programming and the shows they put on.
“Their community, they’re just a really great organization that fills a much needed niche in Victoria’s music scene,” Josephs added.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Blush. in the comments below.
