Victoria Canal/Lucy Clearwater
Victoria Canal
Image courtesy of the artist
Lucy Clearwater
Image courtesy of the artist
For almost two years, singer-songwriter Victoria Canal used her gift primarily as a way to process grief. The result of this transformative period was 2022’s Elegy EP, a bittersweet collection of tracks including “swan song,” hailed by Coldplay’s Chris Martin as “one of the best songs ever written.” Now, after experiencing creative and emotional catharsis, Canal is turning the camera back on herself and zooming in further than ever before. Grown from heartache and made with unabashed honesty, WELL WELL finds the artist at her most vulnerable—and her most courageous.
Canal, who received the 2023 Rising Star award at the prestigious Ivor Novellos, embraces the discomfort of self-analysis. “These days I’m writing mostly to confront things about myself in order to gain more of an understanding and acceptance of them,” she shares. She first started sowing the seeds of WELL WELL during quarantine, in part while watching the TV show Parenthood. She recognized herself in a people-pleasing character, remarking, “I’ve definitely shrunk myself down before to please everyone else. I deserve to take up space.” “Yes Man,” the first song written for the upcoming EP, sprung from this feeling: prioritizing someone else’s comfort isn’t worth the price of losing yourself. “Well, well, what do you know?/You took so much space, seems I lost my place,” she sings.
Canal challenges the habit of self-shrinking across all of WELL WELL, magnifying parts of herself that she’s never openly shared before. The gentle gut-punch of opener “Shape” delves into the complex and intimate topic of body dysmorphia. Against folky guitar and airy backing vocals, her retrospective lyricism brings to the surface internalized moments, like the lasting impact of passing cruelty (“All it takes is once/Some kid in math class likens you to a bus”) and the relationship between self-image and faith (“And I’d trade being mad at God/For liking what I’ve got”). These experiences are all too common for anyone who sits outside the status quo, and Canal reclaims her own power by bringing them to the surface on her own terms.
Lucy Clearwater was born in a bathtub in a cookie factory in Northern California. The "sweet" and slightly granola nature-lover is an indie-folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a background in classical violin. Since moving to Los Angeles at age 18, she’s released an emotional range of singles, as well as her debut EP Feel Again (2020), followed by her self-produced EP, Casual (2023). She has graced the stage at many of LA’s most legendary and beloved venues including the Troubadour, and has sold out shows at The Hotel Cafe and School Night at Bardot.
In 2017, while playing living-room concerts and solo traveling around Europe with just a backpack and guitar, Clearwater developed an affinity for the German language. When the world shut down in 2020, she decided to learn German as a quarantine hobby. Only a year later, the songstress had written a dozen songs in German and self-produced them while isolating at a cabin in the woods north of San Francisco. After spending some extended time in Berlin and touring Germany once again, Clearwater’s German language EP Augenlieder was released in 2023, which garnered attention from influential figures in the German music scene.
A natural-born community builder, she’s established a highly respected monthly gathering of songwriters both in LA and Berlin, which has been frequently compared to the parties hosted by Mama Cass (of the Mamas & the Papas), a centerpiece to the legendary Laurel Canyon scene of the late 60s and early 70s.
Her songs are incredibly emotive, vulnerable, and melodically driven with influence from Joni Mitchell, Eva Cassidy, Gregory Alan Isakov, and Laura Marling, to name a few. That said, tissues are a wise accessory at any Lucy Clearwater concert.