Bria Salmena

BRIA SALMENA

BIG DOG

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. Amidst this vast sonic landscape, Salmena’s potent lyrical imagery and gorgeous vocals stand dead center, perfectly in focus.

For Salmena, it is impossible to unlink the personal journey represented by Big Dogfrom the collaborative relationships that went into its creation. Though the record is being released under her full name, “none of this would have been encouraged or possible without the support from my community,” she says.

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.”

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