Treat Yourself to Devours

Jeff Cancade is wearing a Slipknot T-shirt with a rainbow on it when they sit down with me for an interview on Zoom. The unofficial merch — a cheeky send-up to a campy ’90s metal band that is as maligned in some circles as it is beloved in others — is, in many ways, emblematic of how Cancade approaches their work as a musician who proudly wears their sense of humour, their wide-ranging pop influences and their heart on their sleeve.

Cancade lives in Vancouver and performs deliciously dark, glitchy synth pop as Devours, a one-person outfit that has gained a cult following across B.C.’s independent music scene. Key to their appeal is the wit and vulnerability that infuse their diaristic songs about middle age, queer life and the challenges of eking out a living in an expensive city.

Sweet and self-effacing in person, Cancade was happily surprised when more than 500 people packed the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver to celebrate the release of their fifth album, Sports Car Era, earlier this spring. Like many of us, they seem to have a clearer picture of what’s gone wrong in their career than what’s gone well: Cancade is hyper-aware of how the music scene embraces younger artists and how forces beyond their control are hindering their reach into the U.S. market, again. They’ve recently cancelled their U.S. tour dates. Going there, they say, feels too risky.

Those U.S. cancellations mean the connections they’ve made with promoters and DIY festival producers in the Pacific Northwest are likely to languish over the next four years, and they won’t be realizing their dream of touring the east coast of the U.S., where so many big cities are close together — unlike in Canada. As many Canadian musicians have noted, American success appears to be a prerequisite to being embraced at home.

But here at home in Vancouver, the joyful crowd at the Rickshaw received Cancade with open arms. People danced, some sang along and Dave Prowse, the drummer of the critically acclaimed Vancouver punk duo Japandroids, accompanied Devours onstage.

Before the show ended, Cancade launched a paper mâché replica of their head into the crowd, where the audience bounced it around, then ripped it apart. The destruction mimicked the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on Cancade’s life and career. Their latest album, after all, is about losing momentum in the music industry during the early pandemic years and re-emerging from isolation to learn their fellow musicians have donned the mantle of adulthood, and they may have aged out of the scene.

Late bloomer

Before Cancade was a maker of what they describe as “mutant DIY homo pop” with a cult following, they were a creative, funny kid in Nanaimo.

“I liked elementary a lot more than high school,” Cancade says. “I was very artsy and flamboyantly gay — but didn’t know that I was gay yet.”

General acceptance and gentle teasing from their peers turned to threats of physical violence around Grade 6 or 7. That’s when Cancade swapped their splashy women’s and rainbow-clad clothing for Quicksilver surf T-shirts and tried to blend in.

Nanaimo in the ’90s wasn’t a great place to be a queer teen. Being gay was “the joke of the earth,” Cancade says.

“It was a really scary time growing up. I didn’t have anyone to talk to.”

They first thought they might be gay in late elementary school. When they visited the video store, they’d gravitate to the fitness section to gaze at the brawny male bodybuilders on the cases of VHS tapes. “I was so scrawny as a kid and knew, from a very early age that I hated my body,” they say. “It was such a weird self-loathing, body dysmorphia-type situation growing up.”

They repressed their feelings and aimed to avoid being ostracized, but remained a quirky music lover who drummed, played piano, synth and even rapped.

They studied psychology at the University of Victoria, made music in Montreal and released mixtapes in Vancouver. It wasn’t until they started making their 2015 album Late Bloomer that Cancade started singing openly about their life and experiences.

“With Late Bloomer, I was entrenched in Vancouver’s bear community where there are so many pressures to be butch and look masculine,” Cancade says. “That album was very much a punk statement of ‘I’m going to dress the way I want.’”

In Late Bloomer’s bouncy title track, they sing:

I don’t belong in this city
I don’t fit in with the scene
And I can try to change, but it wouldn’t be me

I’m going to dance
All night
In lace and leather, I’m a tough guy
I wasn’t made to live a lie
Go on and watch it from the sidelines

Cancade didn’t see themself reflected in mainstream pop culture in the 2010s, so they decided to sing about body image insecurities and gay relationships even though they knew their lyrics would narrow their potential reach.

“My aspirations have always been to write honest music about contemporary gay life — the good, the bad, the ugly and the unconventional — in an effort to push the needle even a tiny bit forward for queer art. We’ve had gay pop stars singing about partying and dancing and being hot, but I write from the perspective of a less attractive, aging outsider, experiencing the darker side of queer existence,” they say.

“People have appreciated the rawness of it, and that’s probably why it’s found cult success over the years.”

Audience members in Devours’ early years told Cancade they had helped them come out, which felt profound, but their success in Vancouver has largely been in the indie music, not the LGBTQ2S+ scene.

With a favourable response to Late Bloomer, Cancade hoped to become an Orville Peck-type figure and worked on their image, applying exaggerated eyebrows and pressure on themself to achieve musical success.

Cancade released Iconoclast in 2019 and was to play the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas in March 2020, but COVID quashed that dream. They released Escape From Planet Devours in 2021, and their 2023 album Homecoming Queen was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

“That was one of the most meaningful moments of my life,” Cancade says. It was a special moment of feeling seen,” they say.

For decades, the self-described “CanCon diehard” dreamed about making a dent in the Canadian music world. But the dream had shrivelled due to a lack of industry support for their first few records.

“Getting recognized by the Polaris jury was tremendously validating.”

While the recognition boosted their profile among the local fans, it did little to elevate their career.

Midlife musings

Cancade kneels on a podium like a swimsuit model with their hands thrown behind their head, two lines of black makeup crossing between their eyebrows with XL — 40 in Roman numerals — painted on their forehead on the cover of their latest album.

“It’s about the absurdity of branding and commodifying myself as a 40-year-old in an image-obsessed, youth-driven industry,” they say of the grease paint.

“I don’t want to go through life at a distance,” Cancade sings on Sports Car Era’s danceable title track, “Squeezed out of the city and priced out of existence.”

“The album’s theme is about trying to reintegrate into a chaotic world post-COVID,” Cancade says. “I feel like I’ve gotten squeezed out. I can’t afford anything anymore. A lot of my friends are having kids, getting married and are not doing music anymore. It’s the realization that adulthood isn’t easy, it doesn’t get easier after you’ve been on Exclaim!.”

With songs that are stylized diary entries, it’s not surprising that lyrics penned by Cancade continue to be introspective, dramatic, depressive and deliciously vicious, often set to driving beats.

Queer, unjaded and music-loving young people in Courtenay, Smithers and other small towns flock to Devours shows for a good time. The scene is out and proud, a stark contrast to their youth. “Queer culture has exploded.”

Now at 40, Cancade’s focus has shifted from the intensity of trying to break out as an emerging artist to the more grounding, expansive pleasure of connecting meaningfully with their fans. They’ve spent years hustling, managing all the graphic design, promotion and bookings for Devours on their own while maintaining at least a part-time day job. They aren’t slowing down, but their priorities have changed.

“I sometimes reflect on moments of people telling me my music has meant something to them. I never thought something like that could happen when I was younger,” they say. “Meeting people, making real connections with them, is way better than being on Pitchfork.”

Cancade has also been working on reconnecting with the kid they were. “That kid wearing rainbow clothes who didn’t know or care about what other people saw,” as they describe it.

“I try to be honest in my lyrics and not do things to make money or to fit in or get onto popular playlists. I do my own thing, and I’m proud of that.”

Devours is touring across B.C. and in Alberta in May and June, with stops in Vancouver, Nanaimo, Ymir, Victoria, Calgary and Wells. They post regular performance updates on Instagram.