Believe it or not, there’s a genuine shortage of modern rock stars, or at least true artists, in the world. There’s a lacking in the sort of people who will get up on stage and not just make music, but perform! Kanye West isn’t about to pull an Alice Cooper and chop off his own head on stage, only to reattach it during the next song. If Taylor Swift ever sets fire to a guitar at best it’ll be as a poor cliché, or, at its worst, a tragedy.
When artists like Brandon Voyeur comes along, with the full song and dance of a Thin White Duke, it’s a rarity that gets lumped in on the fringes of art-rock. Playing to his strengths, Voyeur’s latest release, “IIV,” feels like a teaser to a full-on rock opera. Unfortunately, as he explains, that’s been more of a hindrance than anything at this point in his career.
Voyeur delivers “IIV” in a near monotone Beck-meets-Damon Albarn state, diverging from what he describes as his usual high energy punk edged art-rock, but with the showmanship of Bowie.
The video is the direct sequel to his 2017 release, the equally theatrical and epically 17-minute long “Modern Divinity.” We see Voyeur battling his masked demons, representing a cornucopia of woes like a Freudian wet dream.
At the heart of it is Voyeur’s struggle with self-identity, and how he’s coped with it in his career since moving from Halifax to Montreal in the last year.
“In ‘IIV’, this mental tug of war gets dark and immediate. I have an awakening from a year-long hibernation since I moved, having lost the suit connected to who I am. The other aspects of my mind know I have something drastic in mind and try to keep me separated, but I gather up those pieces one by one. And I decide the last thing I need to do to have Brandon Voyeur exist at the forefront of my self is to kill off the inner child,” explains Voyeur.
“It’s the empowering idea of accepting ones darkness, but similarly to Modern Divinity, it asks the cost of that.”
It’s the nature of showmanship, and raw honesty thrust into the spotlight that Voyeur’s had to swallow and overcome, especially for a genre that demands a big spotlight. He has leapt, both feet first, into large-scale production without the necessary avenue to support it. He has emerged into the world formed for a stadium crowd, frustrated by an act that doesn’t translate onto a small stage. While the songs stand alone, they are inevitably humbled without the full set of theatrics.
“I’ve had some intense introspection, and it’s been a way for me to deal with and show parts of myself that have always been dwelling underneath,” says Voyeur.
“It’s been 3 years now and I’ve certainly struggled with knowing my voice and self, but not finding an audience, and you really can’t help but feeling those darker parts in conflict with the rest of you when you’re putting in so much mental energy but not seeing things come to fruition as you’d like.
In Halifax, I definitely had a hard time with gigging; I didn’t exactly fit in with much of the bands sonically so I never got many invites to open up for shows. It was my shows or nothing. Especially in this polished social media age, it can feel like a bit of a futile cycle trying to get your weird-self known in a scene that doesn’t know where to put you. It’s pretty easy to start feeling isolated and discouraged, especially when you leave home behind.
But even all that said, I don’t let it stop me. I don’t make art to be loved by all. I make it because I need to share these thoughts. And I think a lot of that feeling seeped into this track and video.”
In a world of shoegaze and bands that can barely get their bassist to break out of their power stance, Brandon Voyeur is a diamond in the rough. Fortunately it works on video, but someone needs to start throwing him grant money immediately if we’re going to see this rock spectacle hit the big stage.