Sister Ray: Canadian star reimagining traditional folk music for today

Ella Coyes, the singer-songwriter known as Sister Ray, writes all of their songs alone, but they don’t really become special to them until they can play them in a room full of people. That’s why they called their debut album, released last year, ‘Communion’. Their visceral, dark indie-folk songs dive headfirst into instances of pain and guilt, be it a gory breakup or a heart-panging childhood memory. Yet when Coyes sings them, there’s a feeling of weight being shed. As they release their new EP, ‘Teeth’ (due May 12), a collection of equally raw and memorable songs, they’ve learned their musical purpose.

“I’ve just constantly lived with a sense of impending doom, for my whole sentient life,” Coyes says, cracking a smile on video call from home in Toronto. “But I also enjoy the practice of sharing sadness. I think it’s just a really big relief. I find the joy in being in those communal spaces, because I think it can be vulnerable for everybody, and if we can all let each other find that space, that’s when it feels really beautiful. So I think it is the path to joy, to just kind of let it be; let it have its space.”

Coyes learned this communal approach to music from their Métis background (an Indigenous people hailing from Western Canada). Music is an integral part of Métis culture;  a tradition of fiddle music and dances has been passed down through countless generations. Ever since Coyes was young, this history meant something to them. “[As a kid] I was like, ‘Woah, this shit is in my body’,” they say. “It’s in me from before I was born or something. It felt so intense.” It was a connection not just to the people around them, but to their heritage, a link constantly endangered by so many years of colonisation and genocide.

“I think especially in my generation, the tragedies of being Indigenous in Canada were really revealed. We know about, like, thousands of children being buried at residential schools. But the music was a permanent piece of joy that was maintained throughout that time. And for me it’s the symbol of survival of my people — even though it historically was not really written down, it was passed on through people being resilient.”

Coyes began Sister Ray as an improvisational project aged 18. They would get onstage with no songs planned out and just let them flow. Many of the tracks that are now on ‘Communion’ began that way, shaped over months or years of these performances. On songs like breathtaking single ‘Reputations’, nostalgia and dread rush in and out like tides, ghostly synths wailing beneath the guitar backbone. Coyes’ voice is a distinctive drawl, grimly stoic yet sometimes cracking to let quietly desperate emotion shine through.

While Coyes’ performances are no longer improvisational, their songwriting style is still indebted to those beginnings. “There was no time to think or filter about what I was gonna put in those songs. So now when I write, I really look to that as a guiding light of not censoring myself.” Still, it was difficult to allow for the same immediacy while recording ‘Communion’ during the pandemic; they had to work remotely, with one of their two producers, Jon Nellen (the other is Joe Manzoli, his partner in the Toronto/Brooklyn duo Ginla), stuck in the US and unable to cross the border into Canada. It was a long, demoralising slog.

With its follow-up ‘Teeth’, Coyes wanted to reignite that spark of unpredictability. With Nellen and Manzoli in the room with them this time, they recorded over five days, trying out drums and vocal sounds in rooms of the studio that weren’t intended for them. They recorded in a free-flowing order, whatever excited them in each moment, and allowed for sounds to co-exist that didn’t make sense together on paper. “It was a lot more free,” says Coyes. “It was the first time that the three of us were able to feel really excited about sounding beautiful together at the same time.”

The EP’s four songs are, indeed, beautiful; they combine a traditional folk sensibility with rich instrumentation and atmospheric, spacey production. The title track, its standout, is an exploration of childhood innocence, and how you reckon with it once it’s shattered. Meanwhile, the EP ends with a haunting cover of the folk standard ‘I Never Will Marry.’ “I find those old bluegrass songs really inspiring. They’re like, fucking devastating,” says Coyes.

Sister Ray’s fluid, truthful expansion of folk music is in line with a whole host of Canadian singer-songwriters right now; Coyes names Charlotte Cornfield and Georgia Harmer as favourites in Toronto alone, while over in Montreal, artists like Cedric Noel and Ada Lea are forging their own paths. “It’s a really exciting time to be a Canadian folk artist; that tradition is really existing here,” Coyes says. “It’s nice to be around likeminded folks and share in a time of being really excited about songwriting.”

Sister Ray’s new EP ‘Teeth’ will be released on May 12 via Royal Mountain

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