Here’s something most people don’t know: fish sing. Some use sonic muscles around their swim bladders. Others snap their bones — their whole bodies — to communicate through sound. Laura Kelsey knows this because she made a documentary about it. Of course she did.
Laura is a Nanaimo-based vocalist, songwriter, filmmaker, and poet, and those aren’t separate compartments in her creative life — they’re all expressions of the same restless need to find the story inside a sound. Her debut full-length album Hidden Mountains is out now, a self-funded record made with multi-instrumentalist Paul Cimolini at Canary Sound in Lantzville. She describes it as a journey into modern mythology — songs built around myth, mystery, and stories from the unknown. The standout track Crescent is the most upbeat number on the album; Laura plays harmonica, Paul plays guitar, and she says it’s a good song for running.
Getting here wasn’t straightforward. Laura sang death metal for years, and pushed her voice hard enough to develop nodules on her vocal cords — callouses from the cords hitting together too forcefully. Rather than surgery (which damaged Julie Andrews’ voice permanently, as she reminds us), she worked through exercises to massage them away. The result, she says, is a voice that’s actually stronger for the experience. She can do four-hour gigs back to back and still feel fine.
What strikes me about Laura is the consistency of her curiosity. She’s served as a juror for Factor Canada and found it genuinely moving to read submissions from artists just entering the industry. She produced two seasons of documentaries for TELUS Storyhive — one about music therapists and sound workers, one about the reciprocal relationship between sound, humans, and nature. She’s also been accepted to the Artists on Board program through VIA Rail and will travel across Canada by train, playing music every day. She’s never been on a train before. “I wonder about the sleeping,” she said. “Is it loud?” I told her it would lull her to sleep. She laughed and said there’s probably a song in that.
Knowing her, there already is.
Hear the full conversation with Laura Kelsey on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP28PulsePodcast
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca.
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/