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, fivefootnine is the New Music Monday highlight!
fivefootnine describes their sound as “indie-rock etc.” and since their last New Music Monday feature, they have been hard at work playing shows around town as well as recording and releasing their debut EP, Friend of a Friend.
The five-piece band is comprised of Janay Ma on vocals and guitar, Carmen Overton on the keys, Alex Mendes on drums, Nathan Taylor on guitar and Stephan Bichlmaier on bass.
fivefootnine formed as a group of musically-inclined friends decided to get serious and start a new project with one another around two years ago and this foundation of friendship shines through on their latest release.
“There’s a lot of different themes on this album,” Ma told Victoria Buzz. “For me, for a lot of my creative input on this one there were a lot of circulating themes about friendship.”
“[A lot of it is about] the people at the time of my life when I was writing lyrics for these songs and the people I was surrounding myself with who were moving in and out of my life for better or for worse.”
As friends, the members of fivefootnine have conquered a lot in the short time they’ve been a band and are keen to keep their momentum going as the summer approaches.
The members shared their highlights of what has taken place since the release of their first single “Faultline” last June.
“We’ve been mostly playing a lot of shows and getting these songs recorded,” said Mendes.
“We’ve been playing at local venues, at the remaining venues, we’ve been working on some new material but mostly honing what we have and trying to fit what we do with the band into our busy lives.”
Overton added that her highlight of the last year was recording Friend of a Friend with Evan Matthiesen.
“Those weekend sessions that we had, just hearing all the songs come together and hearing them properly for the first time—because before that we had only heard them live or in the jam room—but actually being in the studio, laying everything down and hearing it back was like, ‘woah, we actually made something here,’” Overton explained.
For Ma, a highlight of the last year was having a song featured in a film, Sweet Summer Pow Wow, which won Audience favourite at the Victoria Film Festival. Bichlmaier said he loved getting to know and create relationships with other musicians and bands in the Victoria scene and beyond.
As a feature song off of Friend of a Friend, fivefootnine agreed that the final song of the EP, “Last to Call” was a standout, and one that they are all extremely proud of.
“It really feels like a proper end-of-album song,” said Ma. “It kind of starts slow and builds really big.”
She says it’s a song about being let go of by someone you were really close with, and how hard it can be to have a friendship change.
“It’s really hard when you’re close with someone—the more you trust them, the more space you give,” Ma explained.
“But, there comes a time when you have to accept that and put your friendship in their hands but you might not get it back, but you hope you will all the same.”
She added that the ethos of the song lives in that sentiment—the last time one reaches a hand out to a friend but doesn’t hear back.
For Bichlmaier, this was the first song that he contributed to vocally, with his low harmonies being heard throughout the song alongside Overton and Ma’s.
“I’m a bass player, so I don’t really pay attention to lyrics that much,” Bichlmaier joked.
“But, I learned them and paid attention to them, and so for me that process of understanding Janay’s lyrics to a much fuller extent gave me a really good appreciation for where she was coming from when she wrote it.”
Overton added that having the three layered harmonies makes “Last to Call” so much more of a cathartic song.
“I love playing that song, I love when the three of us sing together, melding our voices together, I love the dissident harmonies in the verse and the final outro section with mantra-like lyrics, just letting it all out,” said Overton
Mendes says that the guitar work of Taylor and Matthiesen’s mixing abilities really brought “Last to Call” to life as well.
“He had taken these multiple improvised guitar solos and played the role of a composer in the mix,” said Mendes.
“If you listen really closely you can hear multiple takes of the solo layered overtop of one another.”
Preview “Last to Call” and the rest of Friend of a Friend below:
To listen to Friend of a Friend in its entirety, check it out on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music.
As the summer draws nearer, fivefootnine says they are still looking at playing some shows around Victoria, but are keen to get off the island and play in Vancouver.
They are also hopeful to be accepted onto a number of festivals they’ve applied to, all while working on some new songs and looking forward to their next studio experience.
Coming up, fivefootnine will be playing a show at the Little Fernwood Community Centre on Friday, March 14th, alongside dysaynia and Highdive.
Find more information on this show and future shows on fivefootnine’s Instagram.
Related:
- New Music Monday: War Eyes brings heavy rock whirlwind to debut EP ‘No Faces No Names’
- New Music Monday: A Recorded Dawn blends slowcore with emo on debut EP
- New Music Monday: Taha releases debut dance-pop anthem ‘Something We Laugh About’
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.
“I want to shoutout Koby [Andrews], he’s been super supportive to us and our music,” said Overton. “We love CFUV.”
“They’ve been really great to us and as a former UVic student, to engage with the radio station as a listener and to be a part of their community as an artist has been nice,” Bichlmaier added.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of fivefootnine in the comments below.
