The band is performing with Hey Ocean throughout the tour.

Carmanah will be sharing its new album, Speak in Rhythms, featuring the song “Nightmare,” for which a music video was recently released.

The band paints a picture of environmental destruction in the video, while lyrically asking the listener to make a choice between addressing the waste of resources on Earth and protecting their “home” or ignore the problem altogether, allowing Earth to continue to deteriorate.

Within this context, the song suggests that there is greater value in protecting the environment than destroying it.

Laura Mina Mitic, lead singer, guitarist and violinist, said the songs were written over a few years, each one featuring different social commentary.

“Speak in Rhythms is music that I wrote over a couple of years leading up to the recording of it,” she said.

“Most of it is just based on my own observations and concerns with the world around me.”

She said she enjoys creating conversations about different social issues or concepts, adding every individual has the capacity to affect the world in both positive and negative ways. 

“If these songs invite people into kind of a new dialogue, that makes me really happy for sure, but by no means do I want somebody to be listening to the song and feel ‘Oh I should change my life’ or ‘I feel guilty about this or that,’” said Mitic.

“At the end of the day, I just want to write good music that makes people feel good.”

The band identifies with a genre called “West Coast soul,” a term coined by Carmanah’s producer Gus Van Go while working on Speak in Rhythms.

Mitic said that Van Go branded this genre while listening to the recording of the album, helping the band define the kind of genre it fits in rather than hopping across different genres.

“We kind of wanted to find a […] genre name that is free spirited in itself so that we could kind of move around and touch on a handful of different inspirations,” Mitic said.

 

During its stop in Winnipeg on Nov. 18, Carmanah will be playing alongside Hey Ocean and Finn. Tickets for the show can be purchased through carmanahband.ca.