Montreal trio Bye Parula are having quite the week. Their second album, 'Something Out Of Nothing', arrives in a matter of days. Their first London headline show takes place tonight at The Lower Third. And after years spent building a following in Canada, the band are finding listeners much further afield. Not bad for a group brought together by chance meetings and a trip to a cabin studio that changed everything.
Right now, though, they're taking a moment to enjoy being in the city. "We're really happy to be here in London," they write. "After a long day of travelling and exploring the city, we're taking it a bit more relaxed today since we have a show tonight at the Lower Third and it's a bit rainy outside."
Before singer and bassist Loïc Calatayud-Sola, guitarist Sebastián Riquelme and drummer Sergio D'Isanto were bandmates, they were newcomers to Montreal from France, Chile and Italy, respectively, all trying to carve out a place for themselves in a new country.
Sebastián remembers being struck by Sergio's drumming straight away. "I felt he had a really special groove," he says. He'd already discovered Loïc through an earlier EP and was eager to meet him. When the trio finally got into a room together, events moved fast. "We shared music and decided to go to the cabin studio. By the end of the week, we had four songs, and we felt that this was going to work."
The first Bye Parula album saw the band learning how to communicate, but, these days, that process is a lot more instinctive. After years of writing together, they found themselves arriving at the same ideas without having to spell them out. "It was as if music had become our common language, and everything felt incredibly natural." The familiarity helped when it came time to make album number two; as a result, the band say it felt "natural to create an album that truly represented what we wanted."
The challenge wasn't a lack of direction; if anything, it was the opposite. "We had many different styles and vibes we wanted to include on the record, and we had to figure out how to make them work together," they explain. Listening to 'Something Out Of Nothing', it's striking how often heavy emotions arrive wrapped in bright colours; it's full of questions about belonging, identity and home.
Interestingly, none of that was planned from the outset. "At first, we didn't plan on having a specific concept or main theme for the lyrics," the band explain. Only after the songs were finished did they realise many of them were circling the same thoughts and experiences. "In a way, the process became therapeutic, because it helped us confront things we might otherwise have kept inside."







