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, Elbow Kiss is the New Music Monday highlight!
Elbow Kiss is the solo project of Em Boreen, a local musician who has been writing for a long while, but only relatively recently has started to perform and record their music.
Em is a multi-instrumentalist, but for this project, the harp is their mainstay.
“I’ve been playing harp on and off for the past three years, but I only really started taking it more seriously in the last year or so,” Em told Victoria Buzz.
“It’s a really difficult instrument but it’s also really rewarding when you get to certain milestones.”
They say that Joanna Newsom is their main influence, and a massive reason why they decided to pursue learning the harp.
“I was introduced to Joanna Newsom when I was a teenager—she was a harpist, storyteller and amazing lyricist,” they continued.
“Her music is probably the most important to me in the world because of how special it is and what kind of place it holds in the music world. It’s almost baroque, it’s like a fairytale or fantasy while also being grounded in reality.”
Eventually, Em was able to find a used harp on Used Victoria which was being sold on the mainland. They jumped at the opportunity to buy it, and the rest is history.
Elbow Kiss’s music is certainly inspired by Newsom; however, it is also very modern in the tonal choices made in the studio—which breathe new life into what a harp can sound like.
In the last month they released a single from a forthcoming EP, as well as a music video for the song “Curtain Calls.”
“Curtain Calls” was released on March 31st and the music video for the song was shot by one of Em’s good friends, Natasha Lavdovsky.
The song is essentially about the breakup of a 10-year relationship that Em experienced.
“It’s a lot, but it was a very transformative time as well because I was able to come out of that experience and put so much of my energy, my heart and the pain in my heart from that breakup into the music,” said Em.
They explained the really vivid experience they had one evening that led to some of the imagery in “Curtain Calls.”
“I lived in James Bay, near the ocean, and I went down to the ocean to cry—as you do,” Em laughed.
“It was in the middle of the night, I think it was around Christmastime, so a really emotional time of year.”
“It was so windy and I could see the moon coming out behind two clouds parting like a curtain—so that was the inspiration. It’s called ‘Curtain Calls’ because the moon was coming out from a stage and I tied that into my experience—actually pursuing my music,” they added.
The accompanying music video was just as much of a labour of love as the song itself was.
It was shot over the course of months, and the ideas that would lead to all the shots used took months on top of that.
“We started off with just that one image, the inspiration of being at the beach, and took it a million steps further than I thought it would be,” Em explained.
“[Lavdovsky] is just a genius.”
Watch the music video for “Curtain Calls” by Elbow Kiss below:
You can also listen to “Curtain Calls” and the rest of Elbow Kiss’s catalogue via Bandcamp.
Em says that in addition to the work they are putting into a forthcoming five-song EP that “Curtain Calls” will be a part of, they are also keeping busy with a new punk band project.
This new band, Ghost Darling, is something Em started with fellow New Music Monday artist, Sofia Miller and others.
“My friend Izzie and I were just talking about how we wanted to start a punk band for like a year,” said Em.
“She’s a local drummer and is in a few other projects.”
One day, the two of them reached out to Miller and one other and from there they started to jam and write together.
“Just jamming, it was very low stakes and chill. Sofia started writing awesome guitar riffs and then we brought Chloe in on bass,” Em said.
“I can’t really say how it came together—it wasn’t like we had this image of how we wanted to sound. It just happened and it happened so naturally we were all just stoked.”
They added that to be in a fully-femme band in Victoria is important to all Ghost Darling’s members.
Elbow Kiss will be playing a show in Victoria at Little Fernwood for a Destroyed Cinema + Music showcase on June 22nd after a short tour through BC and Alberta in May.
Follow them on Instagram to keep up with more releases and shows coming this summer.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Sofia Miller embraces non-perfectionism on heartfelt instrumental album
- New Music Monday: Coup D’état debut album explores themes of loss and grief
- New Music Monday: Sweet Delirium blends jazz, shoegaze and R&B on debut album
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 such a support to me from day one,” said Em.
“I’m so grateful to them and for what a pillar they are in the music scene—I don’t think that Victoria would be the same without them.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Elbow Kiss in the comments below!
