SC Mira bring their chill and thrill to Taps
For a band that claims to deal in ‘death pop,’ Winnipeg’s SC Mira seem like a pretty chipper band.
They laugh a lot. Their songs sound perky enough. And as drummer Joel Leonhardt gets on the phone, he’s in such a good mood he sounds like a motivational speaker.
If they’re gloomy, they sound darn happy about it.
Leonhardt chuckles at the contrast, and he gets why some people are surprised by first impressions. With SC Mira, it’s not so much how they sound but what’s being said.
“A lot of people when they see us, there’s two females in the band, we’re all kind of bouncy on stage, our music is pretty catchy and upbeat,” he says. “But unless you actually listen to the lyrical content, you don’t realize there’s some darker subject matter going on.
“That’s where the ‘death pop’ comes from — the contrast between the actual instrumentation and the lyrics.”
Playing an outdoor show at Taps Brewery in Niagara Falls May 4, SC Mira are like a gloomier Metric — synth-driven rock at turns intimate and grandiose. It’s all there on the band’s recent pair of EPs, “Keep Crawling” and the upcoming “Drug Warm Coma,” with deceptively light songs such as “Mexico” and “Free” hinting at something sinister beneath the surface. Both are produced by Ferro Montanino, who has collaborated with EDM star Skrillex.
Leonhardt says some hardships, like singer Sadye Cage’s prolonged battle with cancer of the knee, also shaped the band’s sound.
“That’s where the darkness comes from, past experiences and coping with that,” he says. “Now we just have all these awesome songs out of it, so it worked out.
“I think we kind of go under the ‘mysterious’ category — (people) don’t know what to expect. Which is preferred. With our stage show, there’s a bit of mystery to our quirky, death pop sound.
“We’re definitely not a bunch of depressed individuals. We’re very goofy and happy, but yeah, there’s almost like a stage persona we adopt where we’re a little reclusive at shows until after, when we can mingle a bit more.”
The band formed as a duo (Cage and guitarist Ty Vega) in 2013, playing acoustic gigs in Winnipeg’s historic Exchange District. Additional players were recruited for their 2015 debut “Waiting Room Baby,” which prompted the website Noisey to say it will “give you the bad feels in a good way.”
The band continued to rejig its lineup, with Leonhardt the final piece in late 2016.
But despite the mounting praise, it’s not quite everyone’s full-time gig
just yet.
“We all do have day jobs back in Winnipeg just to help fund the band,” he says. “But the more we play as a unit together, the more we realize this is something that’s worth pursuing. And we will.”
As for playing an outdoor show in an unseasonably cold Niagara spring, Leonhardt offers a quick reminder: They’re from Winnipeg.
“That is nothing much to worry about for us,” he says. “As long as it’s not freezing cold and people actually come out to the show, it’ll be a good time. We’ll warm each other up.”