VICTORIA CANAL W/ LUCY CLEARWATER
Doors at 7 PM, Show at 8 PM
All Ages
For almost two years, singer-songwriter Victoria Canal used her gift primarily as a way to process grief. The result of this transformative period was 2022’s Elegy EP, a bittersweet collection of tracks including “swan song,” hailed by Coldplay’s Chris Martin as “one of the best songs ever written.” Now, after experiencing creative and emotional catharsis, Canal is turning the camera back on herself and zooming in further than ever before. Grown from heartache and made with unabashed honesty, WELL WELL finds the artist at her most vulnerable—and her most courageous.
Canal, who received the 2023 Rising Star award at the prestigious Ivor Novellos, embraces the discomfort of self-analysis. “These days I’m writing mostly to confront things about myself in order to gain more of an understanding and acceptance of them,” she shares. She first started sowing the seeds of WELL WELL during quarantine, in part while watching the TV show Parenthood. She recognized herself in a people-pleasing character, remarking, “I’ve definitely shrunk myself down before to please everyone else. I deserve to take up space.” “Yes Man,” the first song written for the upcoming EP, sprung from this feeling: Prioritizing someone else’s comfort isn’t worth the price of losing yourself. “Well well, what do you know? / You took so much space, seems I lost my place,” she sings.
Canal challenges the habit of self-shrinking across all of WELL WELL, magnifying parts of herself that she’s never openly shared before. The gentle gut-punch of opener “Shape” delves into the complex and intimate topic of body dysmorphia. Against folky guitar and airy backing vocals, her retrospective lyricism brings to the surface internalized moments, like the lasting impact of passing cruelty (“All it takes is once/Some kid in math class likens you to a bus”) and the relationship between self-image and faith (“And I’d trade being mad at God/For liking what I’ve got”). These experiences are all too common for anyone who sits outside the status quo, and Canal reclaims her own power by bringing them to the surface on her own terms.
