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, palace oaks is the New Music Monday highlight!
palace oaks is the moniker of Madeleine Young, a Victoria-based musician who is fascinated by the blending of folk with genres like drone, noise and dream pop.
Young is originally from Seattle, Washington, but moved to Edmonton, Alberta in 2017 to attend the University of Alberta.
It was in Edmonton that Young first started dabbling in the DIY music scene, trying her hand at songwriting and performing.
After university, she took a break from songwriting and decided the coast is where she wanted to be, and Victoria was as close as she was willing to move with respect to her hometown in the United States.
“It started out as a little solo folk project, just me and an acoustic guitar, and then over the years I’ve started adding a full-band sound to the recordings,” Young told Victoria Buzz.
Young just put out her first full length album, insular mountains, in August.
This nine-track album, is comprised of songs that were written between 2020 and this year, so it spans a good many themes and inspirations, though most were written while living in Victoria.
“Only one of the tracks was written before I moved here, ‘game shows,’ track three,” said Young.
“I think it’s really interesting comparing that to the rest of the ones I write out here. The biggest, or most obvious difference for me is in the lyrics and what I was writing about.”
She explained that coming back to the west coast from Alberta got her writing a lot more about nature, and using the natural world around her as metaphors for what is going on in the world around her.
Furthermore, Young noted a story she heard of the band The Microphones, and their lyricist’s writing which contains many nature metaphors. Young says that she heard from another fan of their music that his writing style is just what happens to those living in the Pacific Northwest, which she thinks about while writing on the coast.
“I think that’s just how it’s ended up seeping into my newer stuff,” she added.
In terms of the instrumentation on insular mountains, Young says she had to develop from their humble beginnings as folk songs, but it was a rewarding process that allowed her to explore deeper, more dynamic sounds.
For palace oaks’ New Music Monday feature, Young chose to highlight her song “total eclipse” off of insular mountains.
“That song refers to a really weird coincidence in my life where, probably two of the most significant relationships in my adult life ended exactly a week after an eclipse,” Young explained.
“I’m not a huge astrology person, or whatever, but that one feels cosmically significant in some way.”
She added that “total eclipse” became a metaphor for loss, grieving and accepting the inevitability of loss, just as anything in nature ends in cycles.
Young says this was one of the last songs she wrote for this album, having written it in fall of last year.
“It started with the main guitar part, that kind of came together through weird circumstances,” she noted.
Just before she wrote “total eclipse,” Young got a tattoo of a knife on her forearm, then cut her hand on the arm with the fresh tattoo with a knife, which she found also cosmic, or meant to be in some way.
She couldn’t use all her fingers on her guitar fretting hand, so Young started experimenting with open tunings, and thus created the main riff to the song.
Check out palace oaks’ song “total eclipse” off her album insular mountains below:
To listen to the rest of insular mountains, check out palace oaks on Bandcamp, Tidal, Apple Music or Spotify.
Coming up on Sunday, November 30th, palace oaks will be playing a solo acoustic set for a Heater Bloc Victoria fundraiser show.
Heater Bloc is a mutual aid organization which makes portable space heaters for unhoused Victorians.
Sofia Miller, Marina Avros and Death by Stardust will be playing this show alongside palace oaks for this show. Those wishing to attend this show can text the address in the show poster for the address.
Aside from this show, Young says she is mostly looking for a drummer to join palace oaks to flesh out the sound a bit more, and she is working on writing more songs.
To stay up to date with palace oaks and all they are up to, follow them on Instagram.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Horseback Jesus blend art-rock and noise on debut release ‘The Cart’
- New Music Monday: Pony Gold surrenders to feeling on debut full length album
- New Music Monday: Drama Queen releases debut album on themes of romanticizing life
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.
“The support that I’ve gotten from CFUV since I released this album has been pretty incredible,” said Young.
“Just with how much radio play it’s gotten, I got to do a full, hour-long interview on there, so yeah, CFUV has been one of my biggest supporters and I’m grateful for them.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of palace oaks in the comments below!
