Kandle - In Flames (2014)

Onetime Blue Violets member Kandle went solo back in 2012 for a self-titled EP, and now a couple of years later, she’s ready to drop her full-length solo debut. In Flames was co-produced by Kandle’s father, Neil Osborne of 54-40, and she confesses that the Can-rock veteran wasn’t an entirely willing participant in the sessions.

After Kandle and her guitar player, Sam Goldberg of Broken Social Scene (who also co-produced In Flames), recorded the bed tracks at Greenhouse Studio in Vancouver, the Montreal-based singer went to Victoria, BC, to lay down the rest of her parts. The result is a dark collection, full of minor key ballads and noir-hued alt-country. But despite the downcast mood, Kandle explains that the album title is decidedly tongue-in-cheek.

“Everybody likes to make ‘candle’ jokes to me,” she says. “I wrote the song ‘In Flames’ not realizing that it was funny, and people started laughing at me about that, so I was like, ‘Fine, I’m calling the album In Flames.’ Then, when I went to find real album titles, the record label and everybody voted that they wanted that to stay as the title. So I was outvoted, and I decided to just go with it.”