WATCH / SHARE “COMEDY” HERE
BUY / STREAM “COMEDY” HERE
NEW ALBUM DUE LATER THIS YEAR VIA LIGHTER THAN AIR
PHOTO CREDIT : Evangelos James // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Montreal indie artist Sasha Cay’s ability to craft nuanced feelings from understated indie-rock instrumentation shines on her first single from her forthcoming album, due later this year via Lighter Than Air.
The aptly titled single, “Comedy”, finds Cay smirking at tragedy, delivering melancholy with grit as she frames humour as a tool for surviving the vertigo of grieving while concussed. The song recounts the absurd timing of the events of a fall in which Sasha was hit by a car while biking and was being looked after by a close friend before they suddenly passed away while she was still recovering.
“I had to stay very still,” she says. “I couldn’t hold a conversation for very long. My head spun. I listened to a lot of records and made a lot of jokes - something I found most comforting about my friend is that she never neglected what the real world feels like; she recognized the humour that hangs just above darkness.”
The single arrives with a video, directed and edited by Cay which features “my band, my friend Athina, and an old volvo,” she says. “We had to rush to shoot the whole thing in 5 hours because there was a show that night.”
WATCH / SHARE “COMEDY” HERE
BUY / STREAM “COMEDY” HERE
“Comedy” Single Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
MORE ABOUT SASHA CAY
Sasha Cay lives in Montreal, the same city in which she grew up. In the back of her apartment, there’s a small room with a washing machine and enough space for one chair and her roommate’s rickety easel. It’s where she goes to sit with her guitar and write with the hum of laundry whirling beside her. Her songs often start in that room, the sounds of zippers and buttons scratching the dryer door bleeding into demos.
Live, Sasha and her band play on the record’s flipside. What was first sung in hushed tones in a laundry room and recorded in privacy of a basement breathes viciously alive on stage, reflecting the punk scene that Sasha played in as a teenager. The quartet moderate the raucousness of their performance with playfulness—their chemistry and friendship on display as the band makes room for Sasha’s nonchalant vocals and freewheeling guitar. Though these songs may have been written in the aftermath of trauma and loss, they express a true joy on stage—as though the curse can be momentarily suspended and lifted when shared.
Sasha cut her teeth on Montreal’s bars and DIY venues, playing and hosting open mics and performing with local punk and psych rock bands, doubling as a filmmaker, bartering music videos for studio time. In 2017, she emerged with a collection of bedroom recordings — lofi indie songs inspired by the idiosyncratic tunings of Nick Drake and the spontaneity of the Velvet Underground. These short Bandcamp releases as well as her EP Arthur’s Party Trick (released independently in 2020) paved the way towards her forthcoming debut LP.