Not all plans turn out exactly as you might have planned, but they can still turn out for the best. It took up-ending her entire life for Cape Breton’s Elyse Aeryn to arrive at “Bittersweet High.” Her new alt-rock single is a complete shake-up of everything from her career, to her love life, to her music and a glimpse of things to come.
“Bittersweet High” is an energetic roller coaster that captures the recent chaos of Aeryn’s life and blissfully channels it through ’90s alt-rock, complete with the perfectly balanced production of that era before it got lost in the loudness wars of the following decade. Aeryn is naming inspirations like Def Leppard, Tom Petty, and Stevie Nicks, but the song is screaming with the country-infused detours of Sheryl Crow and Madonna.
Elyse Aeryn attributes the sound to be being recorded and mixed in guitarist Garrett Taylor’s home studio, with drummer and engineer Scott Musgrave taking the reigns. At the song’s core though, is the fact that Aeryn finds herself in a position to do what she wants and, for better or worse, this is the unadulterated result.
It’s all part and parcel with the new circumstances that Aeryn found herself in when the pandemic through a wrench in her plans. She found herself staying a little longer than expected when returning from Toronto for a trip home to Cape Breton turned into a whole new life.
“I had been focused on music while I was here but I had made plans and promises and intended to keep them,” says Elyse. “However, the longer I was here the more I put into my music career, and things really started to take off.”
While the prospects of putting together a music career in Nova Scotia didn’t initially seem like a possibility to Aeryn, the opportunities quickly showed her that she may have misjudged. She soon met her bandmates, took a job at the Cape Breton Music Industry Cooperative, starting picking up a ton of shows, and found a wellspring of inspiration.
There was, however, one major complication left behind in Toronto.
“The thought of leaving broke my heart but so did the thought of the turmoil I would cause if I decided not to go. I also had a lot of time to think about whether or not the promises I had made were for me or what someone else wanted for me…. Add to that I was falling in love. The day I knew my heart was somewhere else was the day I went home and wrote the song,” explains Aeryn.
“Basically, things were falling apart while things were coming together and, ultimately, I got everything I wished for, but it was bittersweet because I lost who I thought was the love of my life, I upset my family, I left all the security of an engineering career and started my life over at 32.”
So if “Bittersweet High” sounds a little autobiographical, that’s probably spot on, but it’s really just catching you up on the next chapter of Elyse Aeryn’s life.