Bria Salmena with Desert Liminal

BRIA SALMENA

Bria Salmena’s debut solo album Big Dogchronicles a story of transformation–a deeply personal exploration of resilience and a declaration of artistic independence forged through collaboration. Long celebrated as the frontwoman of Canadian post-punk outfit FRIGS and as a vocalist in Orville Peck’s live band, Salmena culminates her artistic evolution on Big Dog. Anchored by her commanding voice—alternately tender, raw, and defiant—the album traverses the terrain of vulnerability and connection, marking the arrival of an artist boldly coming into her own.

A few years ago, Salmena was at a low point in life when a friend affectionately called her “big dog” during a pep talk. Though just a throwaway term meant to lift her spirits, the phrase struck a chord. When searching for a way to sum up the collection ofsongs that saw Salmena digging herself out of such a dark period, the answer was obvious; the term perfectly embodied her journey from the murky depths of despondency and self-sabotage towards a complete artistic and personal transformation.

Big Dog is a record of big emotions and big ambitions. Musically, the record takes elements of hypnotic krautrock and shimmery shoegaze, opulent goth and pulsing darkwave, with a smearing of electronic textures for a sophisticated and often uncanny sound. 

A long time participant in independent music, Salmena started her career as frontwoman for critically-acclaimed Canadian post-punk band FRIGS; most recently she was a vocalist in Orville Peck’s live band. In both these projects, she worked with producer and multi-instrumentalist Duncan Hay Jennings, who is not only Salmena’s closest creative collaborator but also her closest friend. Their longstanding artistic relationship is defined by a “sensitivity to each other’s process and a shared vision—a lot of [Big Dog] is my experiences, but we’ve shared a lot of them,” she says. Prior to Big Dog, the two gave classic and modern Americana songs a goth-y dream pop treatment on both of Salmena’s Cuntry Covers EPs

.Salmena and Jennings, who were living in Los Angeles and Toronto, respectively, wrote Big Dogover the course of several years. As they worked, it became apparent that Salmena’s songwriting had taken a raw and intimate turn, which began to affect the writing process—in a good way. “We went deep,” says Jennings. “We had some in-person writing sessions that were pretty heavy and affected the making of the record, as well, because there were a lot of elements recorded in those moments that we really wanted to keep when we moved into the studio.”

Desert Liminal

Desert Liminal’s primary songwriter Sarah Jane Quillin’s solo performance centers dream-like poetry and looping vocal melody within a lush cloud of analog synth textures, alchemizing bleak memories into something beautiful and distant. Desert Liminal’s 2021 vinyl debut on Whited Sepulchre Records sold out its pressing, and the band toured the US and Europe, performing with kindred artists like DEHD, Midwife, and Laraaji. KEXP calls Desert Liminal’s 2024 album Black Ocean a collection of “sweeping art-rock, cinematic shoegaze, and poetic dream-pop featuring a lush, enveloping sound.” Quillin also performs as a touring member of Accessory. 

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