BEGONIA RETURNS WITH NEW LP, POWDER BLUE, OUT FEBRUARY 24 ON BIRTHDAY CAKE RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “RIGHT HERE” HERE
BUY / STREAM “RIGHT HERE” HERE
PRE-SAVE POWDER BLUE HERE
PRE-ORDER POWDER BLUE HERE
“Begonia has one of Canada’s most extraordinary voices, and thankfully she uses it to obliterate misery from this world one live performance at a time.” - NOISEY
“You’ve been let in on pop’s best kept secret.” - CBC Music
“…a complex, powerhouse synth-soul album that hangs on one of Canada’s most extraordinary voices.” - Line of Best Fit
“An audacious adventure in modern soul” - Globe & Mail
“The woman has, you would say, presence to spare. When she opens her mouth to sing it’s like, “What just happened?” - Exclaim!
“[Begonia] conjures charming vintage soul and lays on the richly layered choruses. But she’s also enormously distinct in her crystalline delivery, which pairs perfectly with songs about starting down doubt and anxiety.” - NPR Music
Photo Credit : Calvin Lee Joseph // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, Begonia (Alexa Dirks) returns to announce Powder Blue, the follow up to 2019’s Fear, which was nominated for both the Polaris Music Prize and a JUNO Award. On the album’s name, Dirks says, “Powder Blue is more of an emotion. It makes me think of my baby blanket, the colour of the virgin mary’s shawl at the church Christmas play, the airiness of clouds on a summer day, chlorine filled water in a hotel pool, Elvis in the 70s wearing an ill-fitting jumpsuit, the wallpaper in my room growing up, the collection of faded denim jackets in my basement.”
“The name of this album needed to be something that encompasses all of the feelings that these songs give me when they are put together,” Dirks continues. “When I listen to them as a unit, they send me back to the words, the colour. To me, this album holds a muted nostalgia, musings on childhood, the complexities of new love, self love, religion, virginity, and sexuality. There’s an indulgence in emotional depth and pain yet also an indulgence in love and a poppy lightness—two sides I’ve always tried to balance. I feel like I let my guard down even more with this record and decided to not hold back on either end.”
The first single from the new LP “Right Here”, arrives complete with a video from director Eric Peterson. The track is “a love song for all my friends,” says Dirks. “The Matts (Schellenberg and Peters), Marcus Paquin, and I started writing it in December 2019 about how I was on tour all the time–always feeling like I was missing my friends’ milestones, parties, birthdays etc. I love what I do, but the sacrifice is that you're not really someone who can like...BE THERE physically for a lot of important (and unimportant) things back home. We never fully finished the song that December, but then we picked it up again during pandemic lockdowns and it started to take on a whole new meaning. At that time, it felt like everyone was missing everything / everyone because we had to stay apart. Another way this song could be interpreted (that I didn't originally intend) is that I’m haunting all my best friends when they go out without me. Maybe that's creepy but also...tender? It's meant to be tender, haha.”
WATCH / SHARE “RIGHT HERE” HERE
BUY / STREAM “RIGHT HERE” HERE
“Right Here” Single Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
MORE ABOUT BEGONIA
As Begonia, Alexa Dirks is bold, brazen with her florid, surprising pop that is tempered with sensitivity and wisdom. In her music, Begonia leans hard into a sense of arrival. Whether it’s learning to come into her own or processing a brutal heartbreak, Dirks’ intimate lyrics and audacious sound allows for her audience to relate to the messiness of life with an honesty that is refreshing.
Her debut LP, Fear, was nominated for a JUNO Award for Adult Alternative Album Of The Year and was longlisted for The Polaris Music Prize. It was one of Exclaim!’s Most Underrated Albums of the Year, made end of the year lists from CBC Music and Dominionated, and saw both “Beats” and “Hanging On A Line” named as CBC Music Top 20 Fan Favourites of the year. Fear also spent 10 straight weeks as the #1 album in Canada on Earshot’s Top 50 chart.
Fear was written and co-produced with a familiar team of Matt Schellenberg (Royal Canoe) and Matt Peters (Royal Canoe) along with Marcus Paquin (The National, The Weather Station, Julia Jacklin).
Dirks' first solo EP, Lady in Mind, was well-received, being listed on NPR’s 10 Artists You Need To Know in 2017 and single “Juniper” reached #1 on the CBC Radio 2 Top 20. Noisey wrote that, “Begonia has one of Canada’s most extraordinary voices, and thankfully she uses it to obliterate the misery from this world one live performance at a time.” NPR wrote that Begonia is “the place where synth-pop meets old soul and scrappy meets sexy."
PRE-SAVE POWDER BLUE HERE
PRE-ORDER POWDER BLUE HERE
TOUR DATES
11/10 - Los Angeles, CA - Hotel Cafe
11/12 - San Francisco, CA - Milk Bar
11/14 - Seattle, WA - Sunset
11/15 - Portland OR - Hawthorne Lounge
11/18 - Revelstoke, BC - Revelstoke PAC
11/19 - Vernon, BC - Vernon & District PAC
11/21 - Penticton, BC - Cleland Community Centre
11/22 - Nelson, BC - Capitol Theatre
POWDER BLUE TRACKLIST
01 Chasing Every Sunrise
02 Heaven
03 Married By Elvis
04 Right Here
05 I’m Not Dying
06 Marigold
07 Butterfly
08 Cold Night
09 Crying
10 Bleeding Heart
11 The Only One
12 NYE2013