Sitting Down with Virgo Rising

by Adam Hill

As the days get shorter and the weather cools, we endure the seasonal change; before we know it, any glimpse of summer has slipped away. Winnipeg indie rock band Virgo Rising does more than just reminisce about summer’s past with Wishbone. This album faces all facets of change head on and learns to live with the grief of fleeting places and times – an ongoing bittersweet relationship with the inevitable. 

I met with vocalist and guitarist Emily and instrumentalist Jenna at Little Sister Coffee in The Exchange District and, together, we took a nostalgic path through our ever-changing city – sharing stories of old apartments and closed music venues – that brought them to the release of their latest album, Wishbone.

Any particular reason you chose Little Sister for the interview? 

Emily: Our first interview ever was in this building, right over there in the corner. I also think we played our first headlining show here, back in 2019, so it’s special. 

Can you start by telling me a little about the band, how you all met and how long you’ve been playing together? 

Jenna: We met in high school, through a friend of a friend, and kept in touch and got super close. Then in 2018, I felt the urge to start a band… so I reached out to Emily because she’d always been posting covers of songs and had a great voice. We hit it off and that’s pretty much it.

How do you feel this new record differs from past releases? 

Emily: When we started, we were all kind of new at playing our instruments… and over the years, we just got better. We learned how to incorporate our own interests and influences into the music we were making. Watching us change inspired us to make an album that’s centred around change. 

Jenna: I also feel like the music on this album is a lot more mature than our previous work. We’ve taken ideas and themes that we’ve touched on before and found a new perspective: things feel a little more settled, a little more mature and a little more grounded.

Can you tell me a little about the band’s writing process? 

Emily: It’s never like, let’s sit down and write something. We’ve tried that; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. A lot of the time, it’s one of us coming up with a melody and then one of us will say, “Well, I’ve been thinking about...”

Lauren has a really good way of coming up with words that sonically sound good together. We’ll ask, “What does that mean?” and she’ll say, “Well, it actually means this, this and this…” and it’s always so artistic and beautiful. And if one of us doesn’t love it right away, we work on it… sometimes songs take time. One of our songs on this album was actually written four or five years ago; we just sat with it for too long, grew out of it, and had to reconfigure it.

You mentioned that a part of this album is about watching your city change. Can you tell me a little about what this means to you?

Emily: We were just driving through downtown, and looking out at everything that’s been closing… then we saw a new building that’s popping up and we thought, “Wow – there are so many parts of the city that are so integral to our growing up… and the city we live in is changing as we’re changing.” It’s bittersweet because some changes are really good. Through this album, I’m chasing old feelings and experiences and realizing that you can’t actually get those back – they just stay where they are in your heart.

Jenna: You might not feel a lot of changes when you’re faced with them, but they end up being necessary (and even good sometimes); in the moment, [change] can feel really scary.

You also mentioned part of the album being about old apartments. Was there a living situation or end of a living situation that heavily influenced this record? 

Emily: Yeah, a few. When I was 18, Lauren lived in an apartment on Dorchester and I spent a lot of time growing up there. I was meeting new people at parties, meeting new friends and kind of blossoming into the person that I am. Years later, I moved into that apartment and it did not feel the same. I thought, “Okay, that has to live where it is, this is where I am now, and it feels nothing like it did." And then we lived together. (gestures to Jenna) 

Jenna: Yeah, we were living together for a bit, then I moved and then you moved again. A lot of moving. (laugh) 

Is there a track that stands out to you, or resonates a little more than the others? Can you tell me a little bit about it and why this might be so? 

Jenna: My favourite song on the album is called Play the Game. We had a few friends collaborate on it and it was really nice to see it come together. Emily wrote all the lyrics and I really resonate with them. It also has a bit of a release at the end that’s kind of different. 

Emily: I really like Wishbone. For me, it stands out because of the vocal melody. It’s kind of nothing like I’d ever come up with before and it happened by accident. 

Is there a reason you chose to name the album after the song Wishbone?

Jenna: We thought about what to name the album and had a few different ideas, even using another song. At the time we hadn’t finished writing Wishbone; once we did, we thought, “Okay, this is the lead single, this is the title track, the album’s Wishbone, we got it.” Everything just clicked into place once we finished the song. 

Emily: The song sounds so different… this is a new era, and this title track leads you into something that we’ve never really done before. 

Your music feels very raw and organic but having not seen you live I’m curious as to how a live show differs from a recording? 

Jenna: We don’t really put on a show… we just be ourselves: a little reserved (but people seem to be into it, so that’s good). Instrumentation-wise, we try to do as much as we can to match the recordings but obviously there are areas where we can’t do it all. With earlier shows, I used to play a few other instruments; since we started touring, it’s just been a bit too much to do all of that.

Do you all have a favourite place to play in the city? What about it makes it special or sets it apart from others?

Jenna: I always loved playing at the Goodwill. No longer, but that was a favourite. We played one show last fall at the Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club and that was really fun. It’s not in our usual kind of circuit but we had a really good time there; I would love to play another show there. 

What’s next? Any tour plans? Where can we find CDs/vinyl of the new album? 

Jenna: We have CDs and vinyl available on our website, www.virgorisingmusic.com. We are also planning a little Western Canada tour, starting in Vancouver, and then we’ll be in Montréal at the end of November.

Virgo Rising's new album Wishbone is out now!