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Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, shark bite spite is the New Music Monday highlight!
The Victoria-based, four-piece indie-folk band is comprised of multi-instrumentalists Rylan Laurillard, Stella Drinkwater, Bennett Pick and Tamsen McKerley.
shark bite spite was officially formed around 2021, but the project itself began before then as a solo project by Drinkwater, that she intended on recruiting a band for eventually.
“I wrote an album, and it was a solo acoustic project with mostly vocals and acoustic guitar, and I wanted to put it out under, not my name but under anything that could be a band’s name so that it would have the potential of being performed with a group,” Drinkwater told Victoria Buzz.
“And so I chose the name shark bite spite.”
After starting the project and releasing a solo EP, Drinkwater met McKerley and Pick through UVic’s live music club.
“We started playing music together, but more casually, and then in the summer of 2023, there was a live music club event that was sort of like an [NPR] Tiny Desk Session replica,” said McKerley.
“Stella applied to the show and when she got in she asked us to play with her, so that was our first show as a band.”
Their first performance was pulled off without a drummer, but shark bite spite soon picked up Laurillard through mutual connections and he joined up as a full-time member as well.
This band is unique in that both Pick, McKerley and Laurillard were all adept piano players, but used the project as an opportunity to get out of their comfort zone and learn new instruments.
Between this musical growth as well as the differing styles and influences they all brought to the table, their most recent EP release, dreaming of wild horses, came together through experimentation, unique songwriting and collaboration.
“The albums that Stella has made on her own have, like, a lo-fi sound with a lot of layered guitars and synths,” explained McKerley.
The band added that early on, songs would be centred more on Pick’s piano parts, whereas now, songs will come to the table in many different ways.
Another big way their sound has evolved is by the addition of Laurillard on drums, which shark bite spite’s earlier releases did not have.
The band decided to share how the song “patchwork” was created as a highlight song off of the four-track dreaming of wild horses.
This song is one of two that were written collaboratively between the band members, but for the lyrics especially, Drinkwater and McKerley chose a unique approach for writing.
“Stell and I were on this kick where we would write a song, but over-write the song, and have to pare it down and recycle those extra lyrics on the next song,” McKerley explained.
“So [‘patchwork’] was the third iteration of recycling, which was sort of cool because you end up with a lot of ideas that you may not necessarily have come together at first because they’re pulled from different spots.”
She continued that to her, the result of this writing approach was a song that reminds her of winter or early spring.
“Each verse has a different meaning, and it is a literal patchwork of ideas, which is partially why it’s called that,” said McKerley.
She explained that the idea that links all these parts is the chorus, which speaks to wishing that communication could be easier between people.
“It’s about wishing that there was something you could say to someone to make them feel better,” she continued.
“One line is ‘why can’t you give me just one easy word’ and it’s sort of like feeling like everything is impossible to say, and wishing you could have one thing to say that would make everything right.”
McKerley added that the rest of the lyrics paint a picture around this central idea, surrounding loneliness through the winter months, while the last verse of the song speaks more to coming out of this loneliness and what it is to experience making new friends.
Part of the inspiration for this ending to “patchwork” came from fond memories of shared experiences with her bandmates, like when her and Pick would frequently go for runs together in the winter.
“I just have a lot of really potent emotional memories from that time, even if they’re really mundane things like going on a run or a birthday party or something,” McKerley continued.
“The song, for me, is just trying to stitch together these different moments of time across that winter.”
Pick says that this was a fun one for him because although he was still learning guitar and had only been playing for a handful of months, he wrote the lead part fairly quickly for this one.
From there, Laurillard took to the keys and after around 20 attempts, found the perfect accompanying piano part for the guitar riff that Pick had created.
Pick noted that in his head, this song sounded so much different than what was finally recorded, but he is happy it turned out the way it did.
Check out “patchwork” off shark bite spite’s new EP, dreaming of wild horses, below:
dreaming of wild horses by shark bite spite
To listen to the EP in full, find shark bite spite on Bandcamp, Apple Music, Tidal or Spotify.
shark bite spite just finished playing a handful of shows in and around Victoria, but won’t be playing again as a full band for a little while, as Drinkwater is getting ready to go on an exchange program to England through her schoolwork at UVic.
However, the remaining members plan on playing shows in the city throughout fall and winter under the name bennett & tamsen.
Once Drinkwater is back, they will get back to it and begin playing shows as shark bite spite again.
Follow shark bite spite on Instagram to stay in the loop of upcoming shows and releases.
Related:
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“I feel like we owe everything to CFUV,” said McKerley.
“Stella and I are sound techs for CFUV and because of that volunteer work and getting to know the people who work there, we have gotten so many gigs and they’ve been endlessly supportive.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of shark bite spite in the comments below!
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