Leon’s Getting Larger and their tours are getting longer

Emo music was never just a phase for Nikola Boticki.

“It was people just saying the things I was feeling,” says the 26-year-old vocalist and guitarist. “Growing up, it’s kind of like, ‘I feel that way but I’m not going to say that out loud,’ so it was nice to hear someone say it.”

Boticki got into the punk subgenre near the end of his angsty high school years and his appreciation only grew while in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The music inspired him to form his own emo band, Leon’s Getting Larger, with friends Luke Penner (vocals/drums) and Noah St Hilaire (bass).

The band is in the midst of its biggest tour to date, travelling west across the country following the release of its sophomore album, If You Lived at Home, You’d Be Here By Now.

The trio will host a hometown celebration of the new work on Sept. 11 at the Handsome Daughter.

Leon’s Getting Larger formed in 2021, when Boticki and Penner started writing emo songs for their previous bands. Their old groups eventually dissolved but they kept writing, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become their debut EP.

St Hilaire, 25, joined toward the end of the writing process, at the point where Boticki and Penner had given up on finding a vocalist and decided to share the role themselves.

The group played its first show in December 2022.

“And then it’s just been non-stop gigging, recording and touring,” says Penner, 27.

Since they started, the trio has done six tours ranging from weekends out to Regina to six-day trips to Alberta and back.

The band’s most recent tour, which kicked off Wednesday in Saskatoon, is its most ambitious yet, spanning nine days as the trio heads to B.C. for the first time, St Hilaire says.

“This one is definitely by far the longest and I’ll probably say it’s also our most anticipated one — we’re really excited to go out to B.C. and hit that scene,” he says.

Prior to departing, the group was busy working on the logistics, practising relentlessly and making sandwiches for the trip.

The group’s new album takes the Leon’s Getting Larger sound in a more mature and cohesive direction.

“It’s the whole feeling of being in your mid-20s and you’re not what you expected to be, for better or for worse, and just not feeling like you’re enough for your friends and family,” Penner says.

The drummer says none of the album’s self-deprecating themes were planned — “everything just came together subconsciously.”

If You Lived at Home is also more high energy than the band’s other releases and aims to jumpstart more dancing during the show, says St Hilaire.

“We wanted to really keep people engaged in the show and make sure people have a good time,” he says.

The two-month gap between the album’s release in July and the band’s local release party in September is intended to give fans more time to get to know the songs — available on Spotify and Bandcamp — before they’re played live. It’s a strategy that’s worked well in the past.

“We were all tearing up a little bit because everyone there was singing the words back to us,” St Hilaire says of the crowd reaction to the group’s first album, You Be Good Now, released in 2024.

The band will be joined at the Handsome Daughter by Guilty Sleep, Great Wealth and Celebrity Lawyer.

tiagoresko@winnipegfreepress.com