Mesmerizing, engrossing, emotionally enveloping, occasionally disconcerting, but eminently thought provoking are just a few of the adjectives one could use to describe the exceptionally compelling music created by Canadian quintet Sc Mira on their dual EPs, Keep Crawling, released last fall, and the more recent Drug Warm Coma, which was released April 20. Both are essentially one work, but released slowly and steadily over time to allow the insightful and sometimes unnervingly stark material sink in.
This is music to be experienced with all the senses. Frankly, it can’t be experienced any other way, that is how powerfully insistent and engaging it is.
Produced by the band but mixed by noted engineer/mixer Ferro Montanino, the EPs have received significant amounts of praise from critics, allowing the band to become an in demand live act, touring relentless across Canada and much further, as well as being a darling of the festival circuit.
Sc Mira started out as a duo comprised of Sadye Cage and Ty Vega in 2013 in Winnipeg. And very early in the process of creating the band, ‘Sc Mira’ was going to be used as a stage name and ‘persona’ by Cage but ended up coming to be the moniker for the project. Sc Mira released it’s first album Waiting Room Baby in 2015, but even at that early epoch of the band, the times were a-changin’ musically and aspirationally.
Some of the songs that appear on the two EPs, Keep Crawling and Drug Warm Coma, began as snippets of ideas as the band was expanding and incorporating new musicians, new instrumentation which has led to a significant evolution of the band’s sound into something that is equal parts modern industrial, alternative rock, 1980s synth-based pop and something else that is delightfully undefinable lending a mysteriousness to the music and the band itself.
“It’s pop music, but its not totally accessible and friendly and nice. If you think of pop music, usually it’s the most digestible and easy to understand music out there. We are trying to build something. We are trying to be something that isn’t predictable or forgettable,” said Lagasse, the band’s bassist. Cage said that writing music is a deeply personal form of expression and sometimes catharsis.
“Especially for the lyrics, I write what I write because it means something to me. And I feel if we didn’t have that kind of an anchor the music may be different. So, our music is definitely personal. Making something we care about and that we think is good is a lot more important to us than simply being popular and commercial,” Cage explained adding that while she may be the one who begins the process of creating new music for Sc Mira as the band’s primary writer, the song is not complete until the entire band, including, Lagasse, Vega, keyboardist Caro LaFlamme and new drummer Joel Leonhardt, contribute.
“At first it was just myself and then I met Ty and we were working together on some songs. But we always wanted a band. Doing the duo thing wasn’t really for me or what I had envisioned. I wanted to be part of a group and collaborate with people. So, we began adding people. Mario joined the band, our old drummer [Jed Desilets] joined the band and then over the years Caro came on board. So now we have two keyboards happening, so the sound changed. And part of the reason why we wanted a band was that we wanted to put on a show.
“I don’t know, but just having a couple of people up on stage playing and singing isn’t for us and not what we wanted. We wanted to really perform and put on a show. So, the music started changing naturally and as the new people joined the band we were writing together more. When people see our large show, it makes more sense because we are writing about shit that we care about and it’s emotional and it’s harsh and when you see the live show it has that same level of intensity. I grew up idolizing people like Iggy Pop – that kind of rawness on stage, so I think our music makes more sense when you see the live show.”
“If we have to, for most of our music we can just totally strip down and play and that’s fine. But the vision of our band is to be as big as possible, and more theatrical,” added Lagasse.
Cage said they sort of stumbled across a term to describe the music of Sc Mira, and while it seems to be contradictory, it actually makes a great deal of sense, especially after listening to both EPs in their entirety.
“I think we kind of came up with Death Pop because the music changed from folk to something that was heavier. It wasn’t necessarily rock, but it also wasn’t necessarily straight up pop. And the content of our songs is always quite dark. Some of these songs started morphing into this thing that was very heavy and intense. People might be confused if they listen to a song we have called Mexico and it doesn’t sound like something you would call death pop. But again, even in that song the content is a little darker. We have been telling people that with Death Pop you either kind of hear it sonically because it’s heavy or lyrically its heavy,” she said.
“It was a conscious choice to move in this direction but at the same time it isn’t. I don’t know what happened but somewhere along the line we started moving away from folk and into this new territory that we didn’t know how to define it and people were asking us to define it. Even today in interviews or talking to fans or at shows, fans ask us and it’s very hard to give a one-line answer as to what kind of music play. It’s a conscious choice in a sense because we choose to make the music we make. But I wouldn’t say we go out of our way to be undefinable.”
The band coined the phrase Death Pop for its sound, with lush orchestrations and musicality surrounding, imbuing and reinforcing the darkly sweet vocal styles of Cage, who writes much of the bands music and almost all lyrics exclusively. The darkness resonates through the material, but it is shaded, nuanced and not always a hopeless darkness. Even after writing and wrestling with these darker creative outpourings, Cage still isn’t 100 per cent sure where it’s all coming from.
“I have written, and I have always been a writer. I really started writing more seriously when I got really sick when I was about 19. It was while coming out of that process, which was very tough, painful and so long that I began to try and process things. People always say that songwriting is therapeutic, and you get your emotions out and for me it did that but is was by no means a fun thing. I would make a song and I would have it for myself, but it was so strong and so powerful and so personal that it was too hard to even play the music for my friends and family,” Cage explained.
“I just didn’t want to share them with people because it was really difficult. I would be that person in my room crying and playing music by myself, as cliché as that sounds. When I got sick I was only 19 and I was thinking about my mortality and digesting all of it. I had this thing and now I am going to do A, B and C to make it go away, but that’s not really how it works, and it might be something that is with me forever. There were also some after effects that are still with me to this day.
“So, it turned everything upside down. But on the positive side, I did start writing and I went down this creative path and I truly don’t think I would have if I didn’t go through all that. Before I got sick I was going to school and taking classes with plans to go into architecture and I never ever thought of music as a viable option for myself. And then when it turned into this thing that I had to do, I just realized this is all I want to do.”
The song Give It Up is indicative of this empowered sensibility, but also realistically a cynical take on the world and on life and how so many people seem to be okay with settling and conformity.
“Now that I have chosen to do this with my life, I am really seeing how many other people around me are not pursuing what they actually give a f*** about and what they want to be doing. They’re doing what they think they should be doing. That has affected me personally as well. It’s almost like a weird sense of freedom because I am saying I am going to do what I want to do, when I want to do it and it’s working for me,” she said.
The song Noose is riveting and hypnotic as Cage’s voice and words tenuously turn phrase upon phrase within a story of the bleak darkness and sense of fettered attachment that loving someone can impose upon you in the context of a deeply intertwined relationship.
“It’s a love song, but not really to form. It’s a severe love song. It looks at relationships and love and being really tied to someone in the harshest ways, because I feel that that darkness is there for everybody in a sense, maybe they just don’t want to admit it. But there are times when you are in that type of relationship where life is just a great and inspiring thing. But other times it’s ‘holy f***, I am tied to this person in every single way’ and sometimes you hate them. It’s about that – it’s an honest way of looking at love It’s those feelings of being so in love but maybe also feeling trapped. It’s the real shit of relationships,” Cage said.
Breaking My Skin came from Cage’s experience in hospital during her illness and is a raw retelling of an incredibly difficult time in her young life that still elicits deep emotion upon even glancing back at those memories. But, as will the other songs on both Drug Warm Coma and Keep Crawling, it is a song that transcends genre, striking the listening at the deepest parts of their soul with its visceral honesty unparalleled humanity.
“When I was in the hospital, it was for an indeterminant amount of time, so they basically said if you can walk to the end of this hallway, you can leave. And I was very much on some heavy drugs for that entire period of time, so it was like a very weird dream, and that’s what the song is like, it’s sort of about that idea of the hallway and I reference some of the real things that happened to me. I explained it once that it’s like a mirage. You think you can remember certain things and I remember some things but they’re actually totally different. So, the song is supposed to be sort of like a dream about some shitty things that happened,” she said.
Cage’s voice is definitely special and is as enigmatic and expressive as it is powerful and emotionally visceral. She sings what she feels and feels everything that she sings, wrapping her malleable voice around a raft of feelings, thoughts and observation using tone, inflection, volume, dissonance and sweetness to penetratingly wonderful effect. It’s a voice that she has allowed to blossom almost as if it is an integral part of her identity.
“I think everybody’s voice changes over the course of the years. I know when I listen to some of my favourite albums of my favourite bands the vocals will sound completely different than their current albums. I think it’s been a bit of a path for me finding what works for our music. It’s weird because it’s not a super conscious thing. When I listen to our first album I kind of want to crawl into a hold, because with what we’re doing now, my voice sounds so much different. I am more comfortable now and definitely more confident,” she said.
“When we started performing I didn’t really ever envision that for myself. I thought, ‘hey it would be really cool to be a songwriter and other people can do my songs onstage.’ But I didn’t really put myself there. I actually wasn’t very comfortable onstage at all until I stopped playing guitar, because then I was able to perform more and express myself more. I am more comfortable now, I know more what I am capable of and I don’t hesitate to try different things. I feel like the vocals have definitely changed and evolved. I have fun with my voice now because I am more at ease.”
Proof of how well Sc Mira is connecting with fans, critics and the industry comes in the form of rapt audiences at the live shows, glowing, sometimes gushing reviews and the fact that the band has had some incredible international touring opportunities in a very short period of time, even if the band is hard to really define and categorize.
“It’s an interesting observation when you see different people interpreting the songs the words and even our videos different because we have seen that from everyone from our manager to our sound guy to even the other people in the band. Everybody interprets this band and the music somewhat differently – and they are all kind of right,” said Lagasse.
“And we have done some pretty cool stuff. My favourite thing so far was playing in Japan. It was just the most incredible experience of our lives. It’s the only time I could say kind of confidently that I felt like a rock star. We went to clubs and people would take us to the VIP area and make us talk to models and drink all their alcohol and they wouldn’t let us pay for a cab back to the hotel. It was something else. We are all aware that what we’re doing musically is unusual, so we don’t expect anything, really, as a band. But it’s cool when you get that reinforcement and can travel across the world and see that people like the songs. That makes us happy. But the best is yet to come, without a doubt.”
For more information, visit www.scmira.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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