Cannons Launches Listeners to Outer Space with Everything Glows

There’s a certain magic to Cannons’ music. Their incandescent breed of pop transports listeners from cold, snowed-in offices to a candy-colored realm of groove. Born in the midst of the 2013 indie explosion, the LA-based trio has been exploring the boundaries of sound and the craft of songwriting for over a decade. The creative bond between vocalist Michelle Joy, guitarist Ryan Clapham, and bassist/producer Paul Davis is tangible. Though they were all in different rooms during our Zoom call, it was as if they could communicate telepathically, answering questions in unison.

The unbreakable bond between the three is the critical force that has sustained Cannons over the years. In 2019, the band skyrocketed from the underground when their song Fire for You was featured in Netflix’s Never Have I Ever. Since then, Cannons has ridden this starlit trail of musical success and is currently on tour across the US, when I spoke with Cannons about success, creating their unique soundscapes, and where they’ll take listeners next. 

Cold Magazine (CM): I know Cannons started in 2013. I’m curious how over the course of your time as a band, you’ve noticed your dynamic evolve, whether that’s creative or personal.

Michelle Joy (MJ): Yeah, I feel like there’s been so much growth with each album. But the most I’ve seen is with Everything Glows, this album that’s coming out. I feel like we were able to, for the first time, really put a lot of intention into the album. Because for a majority of our time as a band together, we all had full-time jobs and could only work on music as a side thing, until “Fire For You” blew up. And then we really focused on touring. So this past year, we really had the chance to hone in on the craft of songwriting together. 

Ryan Clapham (RC): When you are starting off in a band in the early days, there’s always a slew of riffs or ideas that have been brewing for years, because you’ve been honing in on that craft for a long time. As MJ said, we were given the opportunity to just focus on this record, so a lot of it was intentional. It was time to really focus on this one specific project, Everything Glows. And I think that really helped it round itself out and make it a really cohesive album as well. We’re all in like the same boat, you know, same kind of ideas, same kind of concept, all swimming to the same shore to finish this specific idea. 

CM: From what I’ve heard on the new album, your signature post-punky dreaminess is audible, but how is this album an evolution of your earlier work?

Paul Davis (PD): I think when we started this record, all three of us got together, and asked ‘What do we want out of this album? ‘ We sort of collectively agreed to make something a little more epic, really using the record label to its full force. So we got an orchestra and backup singers, to really flesh out the record like we had never done before.

MJ: Yeah, we were able to put all of our intention into it. So when we go into the studio as well, we’d have ideas of new sounds that we wanted to attempt to create and inspirations. As Paul said, we added the orchestra and background singers, and some found some cool writers to work with on different things. We just explored, explored the craft of songwriting all year.

CM: You mentioned new inspirations. Are there any specific albums or artists that come to mind when you think about the process of creating Everything Glows?

MJ: There was definitely some Madonna that I played in the studio as some inspiration

PD: I’ll say Bowie and Electric Light Orchestra are probably my two.

RC: Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness, the Smashing Pumpkins record, was one of my inspirations going into it. And Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and lots of Bowie. There were a lot of my 80s and 90s influences. But I think listening back to the record, it sounds pretty 70s. 

CM: I can totally hear that in the record. That sort of late 70’s/early 80’s indie pop is having quite the resurgence. If you could each recommend one early synth-heavy or indie album to newer fans, what would it be?

MJ: Dare by Human League! I’ve always played that and always been inspired by them because I know they were one of the first synth-heavy bands to even get a number one.

RC: I would definitely say Black Celebration by Depeche Mode.

PD: Ryan took mine, so I’ll say Violator by Depeche Mode.

CM: Another question on the album; Your all’s work has a very distinct visual quality to it. When you were creating the album, was there any sort of landscape or location you pictured?

MJ: You know, what we did try to do with the album was create our own world and atmosphere around it. We were intentionally trying to take people out of this current space and create an escape from reality. So I picture sort of a dreamy, moody, colorful, foggy kind of setting out in space or something.

CM: Speaking of the world that surrounds the album, you’re all based in LA. Is there anything about LA as a city that you found inspiring when creating Everything Glows?

PD: For whatever reason, we keep going back to the car imagery. Not sure that has much to do with LA though. When we first started the group, at least my intention was to do like a kind of like a G Funk, like a gangster rap kind of mixed with like indie pop and synth pop kind of thing. So that’s nothing screams more LA car to me than that.