I Guess This is Growing Up: The Destined Homecoming of Devours

*Devours live @ Dickens (Photo Credit: Shannon Johnston -* *@me_onlylouder*)

Just a short walk away from Dickens’ underground, where Terminus Music Festival takes place, we had the privilege of catching up with Vancouver synth/pop musician Jeff Cancade, known to the music world as Devours. Amidst the chaos of a touring schedule and the recent mishap of a treasured headpiece being lost, Jeff sat down to reflect on their musical journey. As we delve into our conversation ahead of their performance at Terminus on July 29, we explore the evolution of Devours from the heartfelt release of their 2019 album Iconoclast to their latest Polaris longlisted album, Homecoming Queen. Jeff candidly shares the trials of navigating the Canadian music scene, the personal sacrifices made, and the transition from hopeful aspirations to a more grounded approach. We also touch on their creative resiliency, who, despite the hurdles and shifting trends, remains deeply committed to their craft and the art of making music on their own terms.

REVERIE: Hi Jeff! First off, how are you?

DEVOURS: My head's in such a weird place because my headpiece got confiscated at the airport. I forgot it in my carry-on bag. It’s a pretty important item to me and I'm on tour. It’s irreplaceable!

REVERIE: Oh no! I was just about to ask about the headpiece because it seems like an important part of your story, but that seems like it would be a sensitive subject! Maybe we should start with your 2019 record Iconoclast instead since you recently celebrated it’s five year anniversary? That’s excinting.

DEVOURS: No, it's okay, I was just kicking myself the whole time! But yes let’s get into, Iconoclast. I put out four full-length albums and every album that I put out there's always a hope. It feels like a declaration of who I am. And you think that it's gonna be enough to do big things in the Canadian music industry and then it just never quite gets there and it feels like a lot of effort. Then you have to question or try to evaluate if it’s worth the amount of effort and time that you put into it, especially when you're not really making money and living in a big city like Vancouver.

I think Iconoclast was the most heartbreaking one for me because it was just at a point in time where I felt like I was about to maybe age out of the youth-driven music scene and industry. And so it felt like a time-sensitive thing of like, “oh this is a point in time where the project has buzz in Vancouver” and it felt like it could maybe get into the industry or something and it just didn't quite get there, you know? Yeah. Constant rejections. Since then, I haven't really had any hope for becoming a big name or anything. It's just lots of my own shows, DIY stuff, and maybe that's my destiny and that's okay.

REVERIE: How have you found the journey of Devours to be, reflecting back on that to now with your latest album Homecoming Queen?

DEVOURS: I think that as the years go on, I learn to do things on my own terms more and more. You know, like the last two albums that I put out I didn't even bother shopping it around to labels. I'm just like “I'm gonna just save money and do it myself.” So it feels really empowering. It’s all about constantly managing expectations. You know? Coming up with your own little budgets and being like, this is how much I can afford to put into this and to not expect it to show up on Pitchfork or anything. I’ve tried to be more realistic about what is actually possible as an underground Vancouver musician. The last few years have been hard with the concept of touring. There are lots of logistical things that are hard with touring. Even just flying to Edmonton and Calgary. So I'm still putting my heart into all of the albums, but there are other things that I can kind of let go.

REVERIE: Yeah. I imagine you’ve had to navigate what things you can manage yourself vs what is worth putting money into over the years. I also admire the way you’ve experimented with genres throughout that time, it seems like you unapologetically do what you want to do!

DEVOURS: Yeah, especially music video budgets. Those are insane. Because I played that game, again, with Iconoclast. Like that was my second album and it was at a point in time where there was quite a bit of momentum in Vancouver and I was like, “this is it!!!”. This just feels like the moment where this project could get big.

It was at a point in time I had started making music, I guess, under the hyperpop label, but it didn't really have a name yet. And of course everything in the music industry is kind of trend-based. Things are cool and everyone hops on it and then they get tired. I feel like the time has passed now and people are talking about shoegaze and things are always changing. It can be hard to keep adapting, but yeah, it was at a point in time where I really put a lot of eggs into the basket, like my love life, my career, just in every way, everything was starting to suffer because I was so focused on trying to make it with Devours. I put my own money into grants, then getting rejected from grant applications - it's so much work. It's insane when you don't have like an infrastructure of a label to be doing things for you and you're just doing it yourself. It's too much for one person.

REVERIE: Absolutely, yeah. Are there things you do to cope with the burnout?

DEVOURS: Yeah, there are so many superficial things in the industry. Like it's one in a million that the star is aligned for someone to be a hot product at the right time. I'm proud of my music, but the feelings intensify when you make yourself a commodity.

It's a matter of adapting and figuring out what else we can contribute to the industry, you know? I want to help. Maybe not as the front person, but as a background person. I have a separate thing called the Golden Age of Wrestling. It’s a project that hasn't quite taken off as much, it often gets overshadowed by Devours in Vancouver, just because of the exposure. That project was intended to be music suitable for soundtracks in podcasts or film. And that's a direction that feels exciting. It’s not meant to be a performance project. Devours is made for the stage.

Before I got into Devours in my mid to late 20s, I was composing for documentaries and TV commercials. I know that I can do it and maybe with Golden Age of Wrestling it's like, you know, I'll keep doing Devours on the side with low expectations. But for Golden Age of Wrestling, it's an opportunity to be a producer and composer. It’s less about putting my face constantly on social media and being a product. I just want to make music. Maybe it'll show up in a movie or something. Maybe it’s what my destiny has always been.

REVERIE: You are very recognized for your costumes and the headpiece - what was the inspiration behind it? Did you make the headpiece?

DEVOURS: Oh I wish. So all of the albums that I've put out, they each have a distinctive look and aesthetic. Like Late Bloomer was the first album that I put out at a point in time where I was sort of moving away from being put in this box with the gay/bear community in Vancouver which was like...hyper-focused on masculinity. And so at that point in time, it was a bit of like a punk retaliation. I’m gonna just wear dresses. Like, I don't give a fuck. This was like 2015 or so, so it was a while ago. And so that album was very feminine and floral. And then with Iconoclast, it was like a goth makeover. Also, I went bald. So I needed to own it. I went kinda gothy and found this religious looking garment at Salvation Army. All of my outfits are basically like thrift store mashups. For Homecoming Queen, the headpiece was off of Etsy. That was hard to find. Which is why I'm so choked that it’s at the airport right now. Oh my goodness.

But yeah, the projects are meant to be non-binary and fluid, and so I think that's always what I've tried to do with my outfits. I like to have some sort of combo of like, feminine and masculine, with blouses and dresses.

REVERIE: You’ve created a whole world that feels very cohesive with your music. Do you produce it all?

DEVOURS: The whole thing, yes. For like recording, mixing, mastering, like literally my four albums are...just like a whole mix tape practically. No one had any involvement in it. That’s a point of pride. I think I had to work on those skills in my 20s as a freelancer, composing and stuff. You're expected to have to produce a track really quickly and mix it yourself and master it and send it to a client and stuff like that. And so that's probably where I got it from. A lot of trial and error.

REVERIE: You often get looped into the hyperpop category, prior to the huge boom of the genre. What inspired you?

DEVOURS: I mean, I must admit, when Sophie came out with BIP in 2012 or something, I was like, what the fuck is this? It was one of the freshest things I'd ever heard in my life. But at the same time, I'm sort of old enough to know that electronic music ages quickly and quite badly. And so I think with Devours...I made a noted effort to make it be about lyrics and songwriting and not as much about production.

I've always been more into indie, rock, and punk, and R&B, and pop all over the place. I don’t listen to a ton of synth pop, weirdly enough. A lot of my songs are just rock songs without guitars. I feel influenced by Moby, Timbaland, Nine Inch Nails, lots of stuff from like the 90s that I grew up with. I think that hyperpop, as much as I love like how colorful and queer it is, almost feels like it's poking fun at pop music, which is cool. I love the PC music movement and the early 2010s and stuff. But also, I think that I really needed a therapist when I was growing up and I didn't have one. I was just processing a lot of stuff. And I think that Devours has been like a diary. Like a journal entry. And so I wanted to somehow create a project that was defiantly queer and forward thinking with electronic music, but it had to be really really honest and personal instead of a joke. The lyrical content is not often the focus in hyperpop. .

REVERIE: So going back to Homecoming Queen, I love the opening song on the record, “37up (the longing)”. A line that hit me really hard was when you said “Vancouver isn’t boring, I'm just getting old”. I could relate to having a bit of frustration with the place your from, especially as your feelings change with age. How do you feel your relationship with Vancouver has changed?

DEVOURS: I wrote that song during COVID where I had way too much time to think about stuff. And when I don't have enough going on, I just slip into depression really easily. That song is probably one of the darkest songs I've ever written in my life. It's kind of about spending so much of your youth fantasizing about what adulthood could be. Finally having the body you want and that you've worked for. Finally having the career that you want and then it happens, but it's never what you imagined. And it's almost like the fantasy of it...I wish I could just live in that again. I'm longing for just...having something to fight for as opposed to being like, well, what I'm living right now is like what I fantasized about. Like I'm playing shows and stuff, but I know the reality behind it and the politics. So it confronts the disillusionment. With Vancouver, yeah, it was just kind of a funny line. I am getting older. Like most people in my age range are aging out of the scene. It's really young right now in Vancouver and so I’m finding myself feeling a bit awkward and self-conscious at shows. Feeling like nothing lasts forever.

REVERIE: Why did you want to name your album Homecoming Queen?

DEVOURS: Part of it was because of this made-up narrative of the character of Devours leaving Earth for a gay utopia, free of judgment and awful things. The third album that I put out was called Escape from Planet Devours and it was a time where I was really struggling. I almost ended the project. My mental health was horrible. The whole album is sort of a metaphor for the collapse of my hopes for being a musician and stuff. With Homecoming Queen part of it was the storyline of being like, well, I guess I have to come back to Earth and face up to the things that I left behind. And I thought that was kind of an intriguing angle to put on the story. But also I started writing it at the very beginning of COVID when I moved back in with my parents. It wasn't for too long. It was like two months or so because everyone was scared and I lived alone. So I started writing songs when I was with them and it was bringing back some interesting memories. It's been a really long time since I was with them. So some of the songs on the album were about family. I also, I went to my 20 year high school reunion, like during the cycle of writing this album and so that was weird. I was really proud of myself for going. High school was not the best time in my life. It was good to go back and what's so funny is that...there were a ton of people who showed up to my reunion. And yet, all of the guys had perfect heads of hair. Including the ones who were like assholes in high school and stuff. And I was like, fuck, they are all aging so perfectly. There's no justice!!

In all seriousness though, I think I've grown enough to reflect on how self-absorbed and insular we all are growing up, you know? It's like sometimes if a kid was being mean to you, then maybe he was like getting beat up at home or something. You don’t always have that persepctive when you're growing up. And so I think I've aged enough to look back and there are no grudges against people in high school and stuff but it was still kind of trippy to be there.

REVERIE: What’s next?

DEVOURS: The next album is almost done. I turn 40 later this year and so the album is like kind of poking on it a little bit. I like the concept of the midlife crisis and I have been going through one these past few years for sure with my career and the anxiety of not really knowing how to be an aging gay musician. Because I feel torn between two worlds in Vancouver. There's like the music scene, where it's like almost all straight people, and they have like kids now and relationships. And so I feel like I'm aging out of that. But then in the gay world, like there aren't many like that. I don't know how to describe it really. It's like two very separate paths, and not a lot of people in the middle. It’s just this constant feeling of anxiety of like I don't know what if there's a place for me in this or if I'm getting too old you know. There’s a lot of people that don't talk about this and I feel like most people give up after 35.

But at the end of the day, I just have to reflect on my values. I'm an artist. I was made to be an artist. That's just my personality. It's who I was meant to be. So it's important for us at certain points in time to reflect on who we actually are and if we could be happy living a stereotypical conventional life. As much as we suffer, it’s my destiny.

Devours will be playing live July 29, 2024 at Terminus Music Festival. For more information and weekend passes, visit www.terminus-festival.com.

I Guess This is Growing Up: The Destined Homecoming of Devours

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