Boniface have announced their brand new single, Oh My God, ahead of the debut album dropping 14 February 2020. Listen to the single here, and preorder the album here.
The single, which premiered as Jack Saunders' Midnight Drop last night on BBC Radio 1, is the second to be released from the forthcoming self-titled debut album. Oh My God is another intoxicating, melody-rich example of why this introductory full-length debut could become the first great sleeper album of the decade.
Boniface is the brainchild and primary creative outlet for Canada’s Micah Visser, who uses they/them pronouns. A young artist who once comfortably blended in with the suburban landscape in which they grew up in (Saint Boniface is also the peaceful city in which they reside, on the outskirts of Winnipeg), but has since spent the last eighteen months finding not only their voice and this innate ear for deliriously affecting songcraft, but eventually finding themselves too; where they sit, their identity, and what they truly believe in and stand for.
Oh My God is Boniface’s ode to taking a deep breath and telling somebody special how you feel about them. Unashamedly. It’s the racing heartbeat, the uncertainty of the response and the fear of derision, but also the hope, the longing and that bold step into the unknown. It harbours all those positive things that Boniface’s music has a habit of doing in the soaring synths, the micro choruses that exist outside of the song’s primary chorus, and the unrelenting insistence that every single they drop has to sound huge.
Of the new single, Visser explains: “Oh My God is about letting someone know how you feel emphatically but without expectation. Love can feel big and scary and complicated but mostly I think it's just about speaking your truth and letting it lie. With Oh My God, I'm speaking my truth and letting it lie.”
The debut album Boniface is a catalogue of Micah and their band’s most formative coming-of-age experiences, each moment captured in diary-like detail and set against a magnificently sprawling backdrop. Throughout the album, Micah reflects on falling in love and facing heartbreak whilst struggling with identity, never failing to find an ineffable beauty within all the pain. The result is a body of work both bracingly honest and powerfully exhilarating—an emotional journey that Visser encapsulates as “taking little detours and exploring the times when everything feels perfect.”
Growing up in Winnipeg, Visser wrote the songs for the album at home throughout during those tentatively indecisive late teens and early twenties, after shifts at the local coffee shop and lost nights in the city. This intimacy has been preserved on Boniface, with the songs largely recorded in the room they were written, with Visser’s brother Joey and longtime collaborator Micheal Dunn also on hand. The trio eventually travelled to London to finish up work with producer/engineer Neil Comber (Charli XCX, M.I.A., Glass Animals) who helped bring Boniface’s lavish arrangements to full and dazzling life.
Visser points to a certain touchstone behind the making of their full-length debut: a mission of gently encouraging others to embrace total vulnerability. “There’s so much negativity in the world, and it’s easy to get caught in that cycle of being closed off and negative too—and then projecting that onto other people, and just continuing the cycle,” says Visser. “I’ve found that in my personal life, pushing myself to be more open helps other people to open up as well, so then it becomes a cycle of positivity instead. And I know that it’s really scary to do that, but hopefully opening up in my music will help
people to feel safe. I’d love for people to hear these songs and feel inspired, like they can do anything they want with their lives.”
This year has seen Boniface tour extensively on both sides of the Atlantic, earning stripes and getting match fit whilst performing alongside Foals, Let’s Eat Grandma, Blaenavon, The Joy Formidable, White Lies, Sundara Karma and Circa Waves.
Boniface will headline London's Omeara on May 27th - get your tickets here, they're selling quickly! See full dates below.
