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, Small Pleasures is the New Music Monday highlight!
Back in December they put out their debut self-titled EP and since then they have been getting played frequently on CFUV and college radio stations across Canada.
Small Pleasures is comprised of two musicians, Viny Franier and Nevada Brown, who have collaborated in the past, but wanted to make something that felt truly unique to them with this latest project.
“When [our previous band] ended, I just needed to practice drums because I was so used to playing two or three times a week,” Brown told Victoria Buzz.
“Viny said, ‘well, can I come out,’ and I said sure and we went back to our old jam space and it was awesome… We got back in the room and had a song written in like, 40 minutes—our first song on the EP, ‘Beta.’”
“It just felt natural to continue playing together just the two of us to see what would happen,” Franier added.
Originally, the duo said they were leaning more toward an electronic sound that would feature live bass when playing live, but Brown thought the sound would only be amplified by having live, acoustic drums be a focal point.
From there, the two played around with overlaid synth using a trigger pad so the sound could be replicated live.
Now, after sorting through finding their sound, Franier and Brown have landed firmly in the realm of post-punk with elements of shoegaze, giving them a sound like no others in Victoria.
“There’s a lot of influence from bands like Joy Division and Grauzone, but there’s also influence from bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Pixies,” Brown said.
“But it seems to be going in a bit of a different direction as we find our sound.”
Small Pleasures chose to feature their song “New Year” for this week’s New Music Monday because it was one of their first songs and because of the memory they shared in creating it.
“We actually wrote it on New Year’s Eve,” Franier laughed. “So the name is actually very well fitted.”
“It was two years ago and none of us were doing New Year’s parties or anything and so we stayed home and started to jam.”
She says the song came really naturally that night and Brown agreed.
The duo did a quick home recording of the song and decided to go for a drive, playing the song as they traversed the streets of Victoria to find a good place to see the fireworks.
“It was kind of a beautiful moment,” Brown said as they reminisced about their song’s origins.
Although “Beta” was their first song with live drums, they said that “New Year” was the first time they wrote a song together, just the two of them.
Find Small Pleasures debut, self-titled EP in full on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music.
Hot off a short stint touring their EP in France and playing in Edmonton, Small Pleasures plans on playing some local shows in and around Victoria soon.
Small Pleasures’ next show will be this year’s Backyard Fest in Nanaimo, which is taking place on May 18th and 19th.
Backyard Fest takes place every May long weekend in Nanaimo’s downtown area in an effort to celebrate the local underground music scene and keep art interesting.
Keep an eye out for upcoming local shows from Small Pleasures on their Instagram account.
Related:
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.
“CFUV has been really supportive from the start,” Franier said. “We have gotten to do two live sessions there already and everybody is just being so supportive.”
“They’re great at putting the music of local bands out there across Canada and they’re very proud to promote those bands,” Brown added.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Small Pleasures in the comments below.
