is the New Music Monday highlight!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Victoria-based, four-piece indie-folk band is comprised of multi-instrumentalists Rylan Laurillard, Stella Drinkwater, Bennett Pick and Tamsen McKerley.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nshark bite spite was officially formed around 2021, but the project itself began before then as a solo project by Drinkwater, that she intended on recruiting a band for eventually.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI wrote an album, and it was a solo acoustic project with mostly vocals and acoustic guitar, and I wanted to put it out under, not my name but under anything that could be a band\u2019s name so that it would have the potential of being performed with a group,\u201d Drinkwater told Victoria Buzz.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAnd so I chose the name shark bite spite.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAfter starting the project and releasing a solo EP, Drinkwater met McKerley and Pick through UVic\u2019s live music club.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe started playing music together, but more casually, and then in the summer of 2023, there was a live music club event that was sort of like an [NPR] Tiny Desk Session replica,\u201d said McKerley.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cStella applied to the show and when she got in she asked us to play with her, so that was our first show as a band.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTheir first performance was pulled off without a drummer, but shark bite spite soon picked up Laurillard through mutual connections and he joined up as a full-time member as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis band is unique in that both Pick, McKerley and Laurillard were all adept piano players, but used the project as an opportunity to get out of their comfort zone and learn new instruments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBetween this musical growth as well as the differing styles and influences they all brought to the table, their most recent EP release, <\/span>dreaming of wild horses<\/span><\/i>, came together through experimentation, unique songwriting and collaboration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe albums that Stella has made on her own have, like, a lo-fi sound with a lot of layered guitars and synths,\u201d explained McKerley.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe band added that early on, songs would be centred more on Pick\u2019s piano parts, whereas now, songs will come to the table in many different ways.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnother big way their sound has evolved is by the addition of Laurillard on drums, which shark bite spite\u2019s earlier releases did not have.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe band decided to share how the song \u201cpatchwork\u201d was created as a highlight song off of the four-track <\/span>dreaming of wild horses<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis song is one of two that were written collaboratively between the band members, but for the lyrics especially, Drinkwater and McKerley chose a unique approach for writing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cStell and I were on this kick where we would write a song, but over-write the song, and have to pare it down and recycle those extra lyrics on the next song,\u201d McKerley explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSo [\u2018patchwork\u2019] was the third iteration of recycling, which was sort of cool because you end up with a lot of ideas that you may not necessarily have come together at first because they\u2019re pulled from different spots.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe continued that to her, the result of this writing approach was a song that reminds her of winter or early spring.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cEach verse has a different meaning, and it is a literal patchwork of ideas, which is partially why it\u2019s called that,\u201d said McKerley.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe explained that the idea that links all these parts is the chorus, which speaks to wishing that communication could be easier between people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s about wishing that there was something you could say to someone to make them feel better,\u201d she continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOne line is \u2018why can\u2019t you give me just one easy word\u2019 and it\u2019s sort of like feeling like everything is impossible to say, and wishing you could have one thing to say that would make everything right.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMcKerley added that the rest of the lyrics paint a picture around this central idea, surrounding loneliness through the winter months, while the last verse of the song speaks more to coming out of this loneliness and what it is to experience making new friends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPart of the inspiration for this ending to \u201cpatchwork\u201d came from fond memories of shared experiences with her bandmates, like when her and Pick would frequently go for runs together in the winter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI just have a lot of really potent emotional memories from that time, even if they\u2019re really mundane things like going on a run or a birthday party or something,\u201d McKerley continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe song, for me, is just trying to stitch together these different moments of time across that winter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nPick says that this was a fun one for him because although he was still learning guitar and had only been playing for a handful of months, he wrote the lead part fairly quickly for this one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFrom there, Laurillard took to the keys and after around 20 attempts, found the perfect accompanying piano part for the guitar riff that Pick had created.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPick noted that in his head, this song sounded so much different than what was finally recorded, but he is happy it turned out the way it did.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCheck out \u201cpatchwork\u201d off shark bite spite\u2019s new EP, <\/span>dreaming of wild horses, <\/span><\/i>below:<\/span><\/p>\n