Video Of The Week: Kandle

I haven't been able to stop listening to Kandle since I featured her last month - not that I ever did, really, as she's been playing steadily in my rotation since 2014.

I dove back into her first EP, her debut album, switched up my phone's song list to remove the oft-skipped Baby and replaced it with Gimme A Pill, a song she hasn't played live in a while because it sends mixed signals, often being interpreted as "pro-drugs" when in fact it is about her struggles with chronic migraines.

She shot a video for it in 2016, directed by Maya Fuhr, which depicts a day in the life of an opioid-addicted adult:

"I won't stop until the pain goes away" - the phrase that best describes the millennium so far.

Video Of The Week: Kandle

I was at a taping for weekly talk show Le Beau Dimanche last night and was surprised that the musical guest was a favourite of mine, Kandle; she played her recent single Bender, which reminded me that she had a video for it that I hadn't featured yet:

It looks stunning, directed by Kat Webber in what seems like an abandoned NDG appartment, with visuals inspired by horror classic such as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining or the Silent Hill video game series...

Well done!

Video Of The Week: Kandle

With her new video directed by Natalie Rae Robison, Kandle tackles the hard subject of violence against women and hardcore depression, and released it in collaboration with canadianwomen.org - a community-based organization that looks to help balance the bad on this planet with a bit of good.

Not Up To Me is a terrific song, and I hope she doesn't tire of singing it any time soon, but because its message is so powerful and it's so well-crafted, it could have the Jeremy (Pearl Jam) or Creep (Radiohead) effect, where the artists just can't bring themselves to perform their signature song because it stirs up too many conflicting emotions in them.

In any event, I'll be attending her show next week as she performs in this year's Jazz Festival - she probably would have fit better playing at Pop Montréal, but I'm happy I'm seeing her in July rather than September. If anything, the walk home will be less painful (mentally) in the summer heat than it would have been in the chill of autumn (and possible rainfall).

Video Of The Week: Kandle

It's been a couple of months since I last featured Kandle, and she remains one of the acts I listen to the most these days. Directed by David Valiquette, this black-and-white video for Demon will have its main line (''You've got to go'') stuck inside your brain for weeks, I promise.

Kandle looks like a human version of Taylor Swift and sounds like P.J. Harvey covering The Velvet Underground on modern instruments, so she's everything I could ask for in terms of layered, smart dark-ish pop, and her songs fit so well with the current weather, with summer struggling to arrive, and grey skies and rain a daily occurrence, feeling more like autumn than spring.

Then again, if the Montréal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins tonight, no one on this God-forsaken island will care about the temperature, because the sun will rise within our entrails, warm our hearts and burn our depression away.

Video Of The Week: Kandle

One of the main reasons why I can't get into Lana Del Rey is that I prefer more honest stuff, and I like my pop a tad darker, too - and Kandle is a perfect example of how that can work.

Born in Vancouver (as Kandle Osborne) but now living in Montréal, she inherited her father's songwriting skills, as he is Neil Osborne of Canadian rock legends 54-40.

She is set to release her debut album, In Flames, but hasn't released a video for that yet, so instead I present you with All That I Need, directed by Thibaut Duverneix. off her self-released and self-titled EP from 2012:



You just can't go wrong with a girl in the snow in the forest.

For the song I wanted to feature, though, hear it here.