Heart on sleeve, new foot forward

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This article was published 15/02/2020 (2400 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A reinvention during a career upswing is a tough thing to pull off, but the step was a necessary one for Winnipeg indie-pop artist Micah Visser, who performs under the moniker Boniface.

The 23-year-old had become a darling of the Winnipeg music scene, picking up steam after the release of the 2016 EP Forward, and quickly signing with the independent label Transgressive Records out of London, England. As both Visser’s career and sound began to grow far beyond the solo project it started out as, a name-change felt like the appropriate path to take.

The songwriter chose Boniface, after the neighbourhood where Visser and brother/bandmate Joey grew up, and released a long-awaited eponymous debut LP under that name on Friday, which will be celebrated with a show at Festival du Voyageur tonight.

“I think I just wanted to put a new foot forward with Boniface,” Visser says. “I feel like I had learned a lot as Micah Visser (the band) and I wanted to try something new, I guess, just re-establish it with a bit more knowledge of what I was actually doing.

“That being said, it’s been a huge learning process as Boniface, too, just leading up to the record. So I think at the time I knew exactly what to do, and it’s still been a really long road to the record. Just a natural evolution.

“I was kind of scared actually, when switching to Boniface… because I really feel like I tapped into a really nice group with Micah Visser, so I was scared to change it, but I just felt the response has been so supportive and really kind and that’s meant a lot to me.”

Visser is a gifted songwriter with the uncommon ability to craft an indie-pop banger that has real, true feeling. The eight singles released so far — some are on the new album — highlight this skill of telling stories of angst-ridden adolesence, backed by bright synths and thumping beats.

The 12 songs are a mix of old and new; Keeping Up, for example, was previously released under the Micah Visser banner several years ago. Visser says those early tracks remain relevant and fit in with the overall themes of the new record, but some of the newer tracks are able to illustrate those same ideas with a different perspective.

“It’s an album about growing up and struggling with identity, so I wrote those songs when I was going through that,” says Visser, who uses they/them pronouns. “And since then I’ve had a little bit of distance and I think I’m able to write a little bit more retrospectively about what I was going through in those early songs, so I kept them in because they were really important for what I was trying to say, but I think I’ve just been able to say it a bit better in the songs I’ve written since then.

“I just feel like what I look for in music is honesty, and what really makes me connect with a song is when I can hear genuine honesty and vulnerability in music.

“For me, it’s been kind of a struggle to keep that when you have so many people (involved); when the team grows and when you have a bigger aspirations, it’s been hard to keep that vulnerability. So I understand why a lot of people lose that in their music, but for me, vulnerability and honesty is what makes a great song, so that’s what I want to put in my music as well.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel