One of Vancouver’s most prominent, and genre bending bands, The Zolas, release their new album Come Back To Life via Light Organ Records. Written and recorded in BC, the new album is fueled by 90s-era British rock / pop vibes, and infused with stories that touch on the personal to political.. It’s also a testament to their creative output and consistent drive for a new, fresh and forward facing sound.
With Come Back to Life, The Zolas prove with that you can take a step back to move forward. Several years since the release of 2016’s radio-smashing, Juno-nominated breakthrough Swooner, the group was ready to start a new cycle and a new direction. The groups Zach Gray had just finished a long period of writing music for other people (including “L.A. Hallucinations” from Carly Rae Jepsen’s critically acclaimed album Emotion) and a co-writing trip in Europe with artists such as Starsailor’s James Walsh. Ready to get back to his bandmates he shares “in our jam space we started fucking around with this nostalgic vibe: like a warped memory of the Britpop music we obsessed over as kids but never got to make. Eventually it seemed obvious we had to follow that feeling and make an album of it. It was a spiritual thing to be in a dank room playing loud with our band again.” The end result is The Zola’s homage to Brit-pop.
And while Come Back to Life is an unrepentantly joyful sonic love letter to a magical time, The Zolas aren’t afraid to get serious on the lyrical side of things. Come Back to Life touches on everything from waking up to Canada’s appalling treatment of its First Nations (“Wreck Beach/Totem Park”) to global wealth disparity (“I Feel the Transition”) to artists being priced out of the cities they’ve helped make great (“Bombs Away”).
“I’m dead happy just being in this band right now. We love making noise together, we’re chasing the same vision, and lyrically I’ve never felt more on it,” Gray says with a brashness straight from the bucket-hatted heyday of Britpop. “It’s nice to have a Kanye moment where you look at your output and go ‘This is the greatest shit that’s coming out this year.’ As cute Canadians we tend to shy away from feeling ourselves like that but it’s the truth.”
