Victoria Canal Displays Musical Range on Forthcoming Full-Length Debut

During a recent Zoom call, Spanish-American singer-songwriter Victoria Canal says she’s doing some soul-searching. In the midst of a trip to Northern Ireland, she’s “just exploring” as she takes a break from the industry. With a debut album on the horizon and a fall tour looming, Victoria Canal, who performs at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 29, at the Beachland Tavern , certainly deserves the break.

Canal’s upbringing speaks to her constant desire to experience new cultures and places. Her family lived in a range of different international cities, including Shanghai, Tokyo, Barcelona, Madrid, Dubai and Amsterdam, influencing her approach to making music in the process.

“Well, it was two-pronged,” she says of the experience of growing up in so many different places. “One was the awe of seeing so many different ways of living and thinking and seeing so much culture and history. There is no end to the discovery and richness. The other part of it is that we’re all kind of the same and searching for the same things and intertwined and connected to each other. Music is the most universal language there is. Moving around reminded me of how similar we all are at our core.”

Her parents mostly listened to classical music, and Canal discovered other artists by listening to what her brothers listened to.

“I mooched off my brother’s Spotify accounts for years,” she says. “He showed me a lot of the singer-songwriter stuff that I came to love, like Bon Iver and Ben Howard and Sara Bareilles and Alanis Morissette and Alicia Keys and John Legend. My dad was a huge Springsteen fan and a huge Queen fan and a U2 fan. He liked Kings of Leon. There are lots of different influences."

Initially, her grandmother taught her to play piano, a challenge since she could only play one-handed due to a disability.

“I started playing when I was 4,” says Canal. “We would visit my grandmother in the summers. She is from Georgia and taught piano and led the choir in the church. I would watch that and feel so moved by it and how holy it felt. I never considered myself a religious person per se, but there is something sacred about music, and I learned that from grandmother."

For the first song she ever wrote, Canal adapted a tune by the opera singer Maria Callas.

“She had a song I loved and my dad loved. I translated her lyrics and made it my own melody and piano part," she says. "It was called ‘Find a Way.’ It was a song about carving your own path and not caring what everyone else thinks. That’s what my vague recollection of it is."

Her first visit to the recording studio came when she was at school at Dubai. The studio belonged to none other than Yusuf Islam, also known as Cat Stevens.

“My mom knew that [Islam's] studio was close to us, and she sent a demo in thinking they would give me free studio time," says Canal. "I got some free studio time, but I was deeply unaware of who Cat Stevens was. I think my dad met him in the elevator one of the times. I was so oblivious. And now, I’m such a huge fan. He’s such a legend."

To date, Canal has released a number of singles and two EPs. Next year, she plans to issue her first full-length, Slowly, It Dawns . Written over the course of the past three years and recorded between London and Los Angeles, the album features two sets of songs that are very different from each other. The single, "Cake," a tune that merges Billie Eilish-like vocals with fluttering synths, speaks to the album's eclectic nature.

“The EPs are slightly more contained expositions of who I am without dropping the bomb,” she says. “This [forthcoming LP] is my biggest and loudest statement. It’s what everyone would think of this as their introduction. You also want to wait until there are already fans in your corner. The biggest thing is that I feel like I’ve really stretched. It doesn’t sound like what I’ve made before. Side A is the poppy bangers, and Side B is my comfort. It’s the singer-songwriter material.”

She worked with producer Eg White (Adele, Kylie Minogue, Sam Smith) in London and Kevin Farzad (Clinton Kane) in L.A.

“Kevin is more of a bedroom-y young producer,” she explains. “Eg White is more old-school but also kind of a mad scientist. With Eg White, I never knew what it was going to be. With Eg, we would write the song together, and he would throw a bunch of stuff at the wall. It was insane and fun. I feel like I got to explore all the sides of music that I like. I like music that is really calm and restrained and music that is fucking unhinged. Those were the two sides I wanted to explore. There’s a different to the order of the album and the order of the singles. You should consider Side A and Side B as two separate worlds."

Given all that Canal has overcome in her life, she serves as an inspiration to anyone who’s faced great obstacles in their lives. And that’s not lost on her. She says she enjoys inspiring as much as being inspired by the stories her fans tell her.

“It’s very moving [to have a strong connection with fans],” she says. “It gives me a sense of a aliveness to know that I’m having an impact on someone. There’s an intimacy to having that open dialogue. It’s one of the reasons I love touring. It gives me the opportunity to see people face-to-face. I spend so much time focusing on my own story, so getting it back is very relieving.”

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