For years now Haley Blais has organically grown an online community and reputation for her witty commentary and self-deprecating, self-loving balladry sung out in operatic crescendos. Her powerful voice and knack for melodic detail flourished on her breakout 2020 debut full-length Below The Salt which garnered millions of streams worldwide and critical acclaim from i-D, NPR, CBC, Talkhouse, Nylon, FLOOD, Vancouver Sun and more.
After being postponed (twice), Haley will finally get her chance to perform her new songs live for the first time since the release of her album, opening for Peach Pit, arriving in Montreal on April 5 to play a sold-out show at Club Soda. She says she’s happy to be back playing shows but now makes sure to bring some essential items from home.
“It feels good. It’s kind of a learning curve after being so out of it. But you realize that there are some things you can’t live without, whereas before maybe you could live without that. Like we brought her Vitamix on the road. We did not need to do that, but we actually needed to!”
Haley knows how to put into song so much of what humans are feeling with her defiant scream-into-your-pillow bedroom anthems. She recently shared her new single and video “Coolest f*cking b*tch in town” just in time for her tour with Peach Pit.
“I’ve never been the ‘coolest f*cking b*tch in town’ but I’ve told myself I was. It’s this pathetically triumphant paradox, no one can really crown themselves the coolest. But at the times you’re the most pitifully lonely you have these flashes of being the most pitifully cocky, where you have to hide your pain from yourself by rocking out, looking yourself in the eye and convincing yourself you’re a high roller, you’re the homecoming queen, you’re the coolest b*tch alive. What a sad prize! But you can make it feel like a prize if you lie hard enough. People are scared of being uncool… it’s a very honest naked moment. I once heard “the only true currency there is in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” I wanted to make a song that was a big victorious lie. This song’s about that last death rattle right before that honest moment, one last gasp of air, one last push to be the coolest f*cking b*tch in town before it all falls apart.”
Having built a huge online following, including almost 170,000 YouTube subscribers, Haley has connected with fans around the globe not only through her music but also through her hilarious vlogs. But are the fans coming to see her just YouTube subscribers or fans of her music?
“I think it’s a mixture of both. Sometimes I’ll get messages written on people’s phones that are like, oh, I’ve been watching you on YouTube since 2016 and I just came to the show and I’m like, cool, cool, cool, cool. But it’s kind of hard to miss. I think they’d have to really not be paying attention to not know that I do music at this point. Maybe a few years ago it would be like, oh, whoa, what? But now it’s pretty much integrated fully. It’s like a nice balance on there.”
But keeping the vlogs coming might not be quite so easy while she’s on tour. “We’re just driving pretty much the whole time and that doesn’t make for great content a lot of the times though. It’s tough to multi manage that, but we’re trying, I have my camcorder.”
Ahead of her Club Soda concert, I ask her what makes for the perfect Haley Blais show.
“Even if a show sounded perfect and great and we did our best, if I didn’t make a great joke on stage, it wasn’t a great show for me. So I’d say if I seamlessly integrated a comedy set with my music set, I think that would be a perfect show, but that’s unrealistic and obviously not what anyone’s there for. I never remember any of the banter musicians that I admire when I go to see them at shows. So I think I need to get that insecurity out of my head because I don’t think that matters. They’re here for the music.”
2022 is all set to be a productive year for Haley Blais. “I’m going to get back and we’re finishing recording the next album and just keep playing some shows over the summer. I think there’s some nice little festivals happening and I’m going to keep busy. I think the album will take up the majority of my headspace and brain, but yeah, I’m really excited. (The songs) are all written. We just need to kind of realize them a little more. It’s a lot darker maybe in just kind of like vibe and context and I think a lot more mature too. It definitely sounds a lot different than anything I’ve put out in the past, I think.”
Listen to the whole interview below:
Haley Blais will play Club Soda with Peach Pit on 5 April 2022.
“Coolest f*cking b*tch in town” is out everywhere now.
Photos – Jordyn Taylor-Robins
Share this :
