Freshly Pressed – Whale and the Wolf “Living In My Head”

Canadian five-piece Whale and the Wolf have recently released a ten-track debut LP, Envy. Their new song “Living in my Head” is the latest single from the album, recorded remotely during lockdown. We caught up with the band to chat about the new music, their influences, and what their dream festival would look like.

From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Living in my Head”.

Whale and the Wolf: Living In My Head is an uptempo track with a relentless energy. This song was an experiment for us to tie together multiple independent parts across our individual instruments to make something that had a ton of movement, but with all of the puzzle pieces fitting together to make up one cohesive statement with a forward momentum from start to finish. Lyrically it’s an anthem for those of us who live in fear of judgement and persecution from those closest to us. Unable to voice our deepest desires we allow someone else’s warped perception of “normal” to live rent free in our minds and slowly chip away at our confidence. We hope it will be an encouragement to anyone in that situation and a reminder that they are not alone.

From The Strait: What can fans expect from the new LP, Envy?

Whale and the Wolf: ENVY, being our first full length album, has given us the opportunity to explore and share the full scope of what we do as a band. There are high energy rock songs, mid-tempo pop leaning tracks and ambient ballads. You can expect heavier songs than we’ve released before, and softer songs and everything in between. Lyrically most songs tie closely to the album’s title, dealing with topics of jealousy, vices and insecurity.

From The Strait: Who were your musical influences growing up, and how do they differ from your current ones?

Whale and the Wolf: We have a pretty broad range of influences in the band, the early influences would include; Metallica, Iron Maiden, Clutch, The Tragically Hip, Saosin, The Mars Volta, Mother Mother and many others. We definitely still take influence from those bands but some of the more modern/recent artists we’ve been gleaning from would be; Nothing But Thieves, The 1975, Royal Blood, Cleopatrick, Nine Inch Nails and Medium Build. The biggest difference probably lies in the production. Most of our early influences were more or less a band of musicians playing their instruments and writing songs with little to no production frills. The newer influences have a ton of attention to the fine sonic details, beyond just the instruments played by the band members.

From The Strait: What has been your favourite venue to play so far? (And what in your opinion, makes a venue great?)

Whale and the Wolf: It’s so hard to choose a favourite, so many are great for different reasons. We’ll go with Bo’s Bar and Stage in Red Deer because they go above and beyond to make the venue a great place to be, both as a touring band, as well as for the audience. The whole team is so good at what they do and so pleasant to deal with. What makes a venue great is the people running and working at it. If the booker is kind, and good to deal with, making sure you have the info you need and they get the info they need you’ll go into the show with no unwanted surprises. If the sound tech is knowledgeable and easy to work with, sound check will be smooth and efficient. If the bar staff are pleasant to be around, then the vibe in the room will be great. We’ve experienced this first hand at Bo’s. Shoutout Brennan Wowk and the whole team at Bo’s Bar and Stage!

From The Strait: If you could curate a festival (with you headlining, of course), who would you want on the bill and what would it be called?

Whale and the Wolf: Being that this is a hypothetical festival, we’re going to include some band that, in their company we’d have no business headlining. These are some artists we’d love to spend the day listening to and hanging with; Medium Build, Cleopatrick, Royal Tusk, The Dirty Nil, Surf Dads and FKB.

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Check out “Living in my Head”, the latest single from Whale and the Wolf!

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