ALBUM STORY
JUNE. (Canada)
A personal name behind a big sound. On June, Kanadia connects heavy guitars and electronics with loss, unrest, and the need to move forward.
IMAGE CREDIT: Ian Wallman / Kanadia. Official Press Images, made available through Kanadia’s press kit for editorial use. Supplied black-and-white image with motion effect; shown in full, not cropped by SJELF.
Click to load the Spotify player. Spotify determines what you can play.
Open in Spotify ↗With a band producing such a large sound, you might expect a title that lands just as emphatically. Kanadia opts for a single name: June. Their second album places unrest and tenderness in close proximity. The music is capable of filling an entire room, but the stakes remain human. How do you create something out of feelings that are difficult to organize?
FROM A REHEARSAL ROOM TO A WORLD OF THEIR OWN.
The foundation of Kanadia lies with James Bettis and keyboardist Melissa Marshall, who moved from Ilfracombe in Devon to Oxford. There, they found drummer Tim Lucas and bassist Jack Ashworth in 2015. Oxford Music Scene spoke to Bettis in 2022 about those early years: performing for a handful of people was part of it, as was making contact with other bands and venues yourself. A solid live sound sometimes develops while there is hardly any audience there to catch it.
The self-titled debut appeared in 2019. By the arrival of June, Kanadia had found listeners outside their own city as well. According to the official band biography, Wish Away My Time and Feel It Again ended up in Spotify playlists like All New Rock and Alternative Noise. For an independent group, such entry points are valuable: someone can stumble upon one song without prior knowledge and subsequently discover that an entire album lies behind it.
