FEATURE:
Spotlight
Bria Salmena
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AN album that I missed…
when it was released in March, I have since acquainted myself with the debut from Canadian artist, Bria Salmena. Big Dog is such a vibrant, energetic and big album, yet there is also a lot of emotional depth and nuance. You do need to listen to the album a few times to get to the bottom of it. I wanted to salute Bria Salmena here, so that anyone who is not yet aware of her music will find her. There have been a nice selection of interviews with Bria Salema this year. I am going to highlight a few. Someone who wants to put Canada and Canadian music at the forefront, she actually ends the interview by reminding people that Big Dog is Canadian. In terms of the scene that birthed it. Many Toronto artists contributed and assisted Salemna. This is revealed through The Line of Best Fit’ interview from March:
“I have so much pride in Canadian DIY,” Salmena tells me, speaking passionately about the DIY ecosystem from which her first band, FRIGS, emerged and which continues to inform her work. “We’re top drawer, but we kind of get overlooked.”
It’s via these nurturing scenes that Salmena became a revered artist who has covered a lot of ground over a relatively brief time period. Whether she’s putting out an album like 2018’s widely lauded Basic Behaviour with her frenetic post-punk band FRIGS or playing with alt-country icon Orville Peck, Toronto has been the centre of her musical universe, as it has for her long-time collaborator Duncan Hay-Jennings. However, based in LA since the pandemic, she and her modus operandi have had to adapt.
Salmena’s new album, Big Dog, belies the sonic expectations established by her previous records. Cinematic and atmospheric, it places Salmena’s soulful, characterful voice at its centre. There are shades of Kosmische music and the spirit of Hole and Sonic Youth records that soundtracked Salmena’s formative years (indeed, Lee Ranaldo plays guitar on “See’er”!). Big Dog is a modern, idiosyncratic pop record that assimilates its influences beautifully and tastefully – and, unsurprisingly for a record of such creative scope, it percolated over a protracted development period.
The record reflects this in both a sonic and a thematic way. The Neu!-informed pulse of songs such as “Drastic”, married to a consistent reference to place, transport the listener, and movement means the record zips past like a train – vibrating with energy to natural points of entropy, like the gorgeous, dejected closer “Peanut”. Irrespective of how beautifully the whole record hangs together, Salmena admits that, for both herself and Hay-Jennings, gut-feeling dictated direction.
“When we decided on the groupings of songs, it was more about a feeling rather than an obvious thematic thread. At that point we didn’t even know what the record was going to be called – we didn’t know what we were doing,” Salmena shares.
Happily, the record has clearly stimulated a sense of momentum, and Salmena and Hay-Jennings have been writing consistently since the completion of Big Dog, despite now being separated by two-and-a-half-thousand miles (Salmena in LA, Hay-Jennings in Toronto). For both, writing and production have become similar processes, with the distance dictating that they now write remotely. From “playing songs over and over again on guitar so I didn’t forget them” to “recording everything for fear of forgetting,” Salmena reflects on the ways that her artistic practice has changed.
“The way we work now, it’s like receiving a package in the mail every once in a while – you get excited about it in the same way,” she says. “We’d talk so much about the intention of it. I would send him shit – I wouldn’t be sure if it was good or not – but every time he would send it back, 99% of the time it would feel true to whatever it was I was feeling. We’re really lucky like that. Of course there are instances where something isn’t working, but we’re both completely open to everything and we allow ourselves space and time. As long as it’s organic to us”.
There is a recent interview that I will move to. However, just before, I want to bring in some of this interview from The Rodeo. Bria Salmenda has worked in bands and collaborated with others, through Big Dog is her solo project and her stepping out. It must have been difficult to create the album and block out the noise. However, this is what she did. In the process, she recorded one of this year’s best debut albums. Go and follow Bria Salmenda on social media and listen to Big Dog:
“Big Dog comes out kicking and screaming. Opening tracks like ‘Drastic’ and ‘Backs of Birds’, transition to the contrast of ‘Radisson’ and ‘Twilight’. On her sequencing process, Salmena loosens the reigns, feeling “far too involved” to complete the sequencing herself. There is surely some workload to be found in the sequencing a record like Big Dog with Salmena describes as consisting of “a lot of colours” which she ultimately left her collaborator Duncan and her manager to construct.
“With this record because there was such an array of tempos, heavy to fast to mid to then quite slow, it was really difficult for me to think of the sequencing. A large portion of the process is that I wanted to take a step back, and I wanted to, in the spirit of collaboration, bring people in and have their interpretation.”
A debut spanning altering energies from track to track, Salmena finds frenzy on ‘Drastic’ and encounters contemplation on ‘Radisson’. The sheer contrast of Big Dog’s tracks, each fully formed, creating their own world is the product of several years of work. Contemplative ‘Water Memory’ was written long before a debut record was even a concept: “[Water Memory] was written at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, when I was in a mandatory travel quarantine, locked in a house over Christmas by myself.”
“The actual creating and recording and playing these songs is the easiest. Not easy, but it feels the best… And it feels cathartic and natural.”
Not jumping at the chance to hear Big Dog live would be criminal. The wild energy on tracks like ‘Drastic’ and ‘Backs of Birds’ are destined to be erratically danced to in a room full of strangers. Salmena shares this excitement. “[It] feels like the best way to showcase a really vulnerable record, I guess. It feels safe.”
On her upcoming tour the singer tells me of the close comraderie she found with her on tour family, getting to play music with her Big Dog collaborator Duncan Hay Jennings as well as his partner Jamie and best friend Lucas. “It’s just like I get to be on stage with my family and travel with my family, and that”.
Prior to finishing with a review for Big Dog, there is another interview to cover off. Ticketmaster Discover spoke with Bria Salmena last month. Prior to supporting Wolf Alice on tour (where she talks about her friendship with the British band, she chatted about her debut album, “her steely stage presence, finding her voice as a solo artist”. Salmena played The Great Escape earlier in the year. Having completed some dates with Wolf Alice, she plays across Asia, Australia and New Zealand in January and February. Her next U.K. date is on 29th March at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust:
“Why did Big Dog feel like an appropriate title for the album?
Truthfully, I didn’t want to call it Big Dog. At the time we were completing the recording, I was going through a lot of personal crap. My band mates said this album was me taking back autonomy and doing things for myself. They said “you should call it Big Dog” as that was the original title for the song ‘Hammer’. I guess they convinced me to do it. They helped me take my power back, in terms of being proud of what I was doing. It felt like the final step for me to go and deal with what I was dealing with, to jump out of it.
There’s a real sense of momentum and intention throughout Big Dog, but the album feels to me like a document of you pulling away or leaving something behind.
A lot of artists have to do that as a coping mechanism. In that way, for me, there’s a barrier of protection from the situation via the songs.
What artists were important to you becoming a musician yourself?
If I’m being completely honest…. The real reason I even started playing guitar was because of Brody Dalle, from The Distillers. It’s not something to be embarrassed by. But that was the beginning. I’d been singing for a long time, but when you’re growing up in the 90s you’re either pop or soul. Or like 50s crooner classics. If you’re a girl you’re a pop singer. When I was seven that’s what I thought I was going to be. When I was about twelve a friend gave me a Distillers record and it blew my mind. I hadn’t heard a woman express themselves like that before. It was eye opening. It opened so many doors to Hole, Patti Smith. Then it unravelled and I just wanted to play guitar. Brody was the reason I started playing guitar. I’m interested in anybody that’s really expressive as a singer, women especially. I’m more drawn towards female voices. I’m very fucking picky when it comes to male singers. She was it for me.
You’re about to tour with Wolf Alice. But you’d befriended Ellie long before you were announced as their tour support. What’s the story there?
I first met Wolf Alice – well Ellie and Theo first – through a really good friend of theirs Cal McRae, who was the band’s first manager. He introduced us. It was purely because we were in London so much [with FRIGS]. I forget why they asked us to tour. We toured with them in the States, when Cuntry Covers Vol.1 came out. I think Joff actually had a hand in that. Obviously we were friends, but I was like ‘why do you want me to open?’ That’s the fun of being in bands, you get to pick who you want to be on tour with.
Ellie’s a dear friend. They were in LA a lot last year recording The Clearing. I knew a lot of the lore but hadn’t heard any of the tracks until they released it. I feel like this record, the songwriting is crazy. Every record they get so much better.
They always pull out some surprises. ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ is wild.
When ‘White Horses’ came out I was like ‘wow’, plus having Joel sing. It feels like they went into this recording with a clear idea of what they wanted out of it, and it shows”.
I shall finish up with a glowing review for Big Dog. A tremendous debut album, I am coming back to The Line of Best Fit and their opinions. Hailing a voice that, in their words, can cut through the noise and either “cure or inflict”, I do think that there is a lot of positive energy on Big Dog. However, there is some reflectiveness, sadness and yearning. It all blends together in this accomplished debut from the Canadian artist:
“Some of the best breakout contemporary voices, like those of Caroline Polachek, Weyes Blood, or SPELLLING swirl and enchant. For Bria Salmena, it can communicate something deadly, a gnawing and insatiable hunger.
On “Stretch The Struggle”, the most striking song off her enchanting debut album Big Dog, she starts solidly, but then wavers as her desire turns visceral and raw. “I just need it, need it, need it,” she repeats, but instead of a person she’s after, it’s a wound: the hurt of someone leaving her, the pain of “something to suck on.” With the screaming comes freedom – it’s there you realize Salmena’s game isn’t purely simplistic.
It’s not the only unconventional choice on Big Dog, but it’s one of the most tantalizing. Salmena, originally frontwoman of the band FRIGS, shapeshifts almost unrecognizably to diversify her sonic palette. There’s the lightness of indie rock cut “Backs Of Birds”, where there’s a freedom on the chorus before tilting into the pitched-down chant leading to the final minute, a grittiness returned to on “Rags.” The playfulness of “Hammer” and melancholy of “Water Melancholy” contrast with “See’er”, a dramatic and often haunting alt-country cut where Salmena moans, creaks, and improvs her way through murky terrain. Often it feels much longer than its 4-minute runtime, and could easily find a home amongst the depths of Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter.
Salmena complements up her vocal chords with a pretty powerful pen. She has the grit of Cain with the romance of Lana Del Rey, along with a knack for the beauty of a simple moment. “Words are just things to say / Just sounds his mouth makes / I didn’t get on the plane / I just stared at the runway”, she sings with hope on the opener “Drastic.” Best of all, she isn’t one to overcomplicate things; many songs rely on a few cutting lines, repeated, chopped, and amplified: You are a hammer, you are a big dog, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, writing in twilight again – some of the key loops on Big Dog plead, reaching out towards you through repetition, like a wake-up call.
We don’t learn who Salmena is through pieced together narratives, but through fleeing, intense feelings, almost as a call-out to the rising confessional genre that praises wordy, detail-laden tracks. “You contain memories / I’d like to consume,” she sings on “Hammer”, knowing it’s better to leave the blanks empty rather than constrain the moment to her experience. She’s amorphous on “Rags”, reckoning with her intertwined desires, begging to be dressed in shoddy clothes, but wearing pearls. “Treat me like I’m putty, treat me like I’ll slip away,” she sings, disarmingly simple.
Her softer moments might be more staggering than when she really lets loose. The opening lines of “Peanut” are pretty simple – “You’re on a train to Japan / I’m forgetting who I am” – but when paired with the bare piano, it takes on a devastating tone. The guitar loop on “Twilight” too, soft and nostalgic, is killer along with her reflective singing, like a doubly effective combo: “By the time the spring came, I was well on my way / Count your blessings, but it means nothing to me.” And “Water Memory” takes it back to the source – it’s vague and lilting, along with some salient images. “The hand reaches / For hollow cheeks”; “Be still, he calls now / Be still, you stay”, she sings, like a horror film.
Big Dog is often hypnotic and always entertaining. It’s a record that never asks for permission before lashing out, just springs the moment on you. Unruly and raw, Salmena’s debut has a killer instinct and a romantic eye. It’s one to sit with for a while”.
An artist that is rightly being championed, hailed and highlighted, Bria Salmena is someone who should be on your radar. Make sure you familiarise yourself with Big Dog. It is one of the best albums of this year. I am excited to see what comes next for Salmena. I will try and catch her live next year. This is a very special artist who is going to have a huge solo career. On the strength of her debut album, Bria Salmena should prepare herself for…
A very long career.
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