It’s been four years since Pacific Colours first went into the studio to start recording their second EP and the Nanaimo rock group is now ready to unveil their work before an audience.
On Feb. 15 Pacific Colours – singer Spencer Hiemstra, bassist Dayton Ferris and guitarist Adam Betz – is holding a release show for their new EP, Summer’s Ghost, at the Vault Café. Also performing that night is Vancouver singer Jamie Ruddick, who hails from Nanaimo and went to high school with Hiemstra and worked with Pacific Colours on their first record.
“I’m really excited for this show,” Hiemstra said. “This will be a really important one for us and I think that it will be exciting to share [the record] with everyone and just be with people as we get to release it.”
While some of the songs on the record have been performed in the past, Hiemstra said “they’ve got some new energy to them” and they’ll be performed with that new energy for first time. He said he and his band mates grew a lot as a band over the last four years and the new EP is a result of that growth.
“I think our musical direction changed a lot between our previous release and this one and we kind of all matured as musicians and songwriters,” he said.
Hiemstra described the record as having a “summery and beach-y feel to it,” but the message behind it is about about growing up, changing, living with the past and “being OK with who you are.” He said those were all things the band was going through.
“We continue to get a little bit older all the time,” he said. “We’re growing up and changing and as things change there are good things and there are bad things and I think that coming to terms with those constant changes was a theme that was on our minds as we wrote the music. so that’s kind of what it has evolved into.”
Hiemstra said releasing an album with the word “summer” in it in the wintertime was no accident. He said that feeling of “dissonance” or “separation” fits the album’s themes.
“We wanted it to be [released] after summer so it’s kind of thinking about this past summer … it recognizes that the summer was gone but it will come back,” Hiemstra said.
WHAT’S ON … Pacific Colours EP release show at the Vault Café, 499 Wallace St., on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 9 p.m. $10 at the door.
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