With a nonchalant coolness, character driven songwriting with a tinge of indie rock sleaze, Alcoves is easily one of the catchiest acts to come out of Victoria, British Columbia.
Formed in 2021 by Garrett Olson and Robbie Townsend, Alcoves joins the ever growing roster of curated local talent as The Zone @ 91-3’s June 2025 Band of the Month.
In late April with just a few hours before guitarist, Robbie Townsend caught a flight back home to Edmonton, AB we found our way into a secret back garden hidden amongst vintage stores, coffee shops, and antique dealers to snap a few photo and chat about the Alcoves, Formula One and our hope for an Oilers Stanley Cup win. All praise McJesus!
Tyson Elder: Alcoves has been one of those bands that has been hiding just under the radar of the Victoria music scene for the past year or so getting ready to break through. I’m happy to see that you are finally getting recognition and are The Zone’s Band of the Month for June. Congratulations!
Garrett Olson: Thank you! We appreciate the love; it’s an exciting time for the project, and we are really grateful for the opportunity.
TE: Alcoves is a band that straddles itself between two cities. Garrett lives in Victoria and Robbie in Edmonton. I’m curious how this benefits and detract from the band’s creative process. When you are both in the same town at the same time are you all in on the project?
Garrett: It’s definitely unconventional. We are fortunate in the sense that we make the most of our time when we get it. It’s almost like having two home bases, but it’s tougher to break through when you split it up like that. I think our experience in the industry side of things has granted us a patient outlook. We’ve really spent the time to build a catalogue and gain a sense of identity with our writing and our voice. We have an all-in attitude when we are in the same room, and we’ll pretty regularly cram as many late nights in the studio as we can around any string of shows. Creatively speaking, room to breathe grants fresh ears on songs you think are done – the number of times we’ve completely gutted a song and rebuilt it numerous times is comical, but when it’s done, you really feel like you landed on what it needed to be.
TE: How did the two of you first connect to create Alcoves? I know you were both in separate projects in Edmonton but the band really started to thrive as you moved to the West Coast. You played several shows in Alberta before playing your first Victoria show at Throwdown Thursday at The Duke Saloon last July.
Garrett: Alcoves started as a rebrand of my solo project. I sent a song to Robbie to mix, and he asked to join the project after. We were friends on the internet but had never actually met. I had just moved to the island, so Robbie packed a studio’s worth of gear in a van and we rented an Airbnb in Sooke for a week and worked on demos, which ended up being on our debut EP. We played a show on the Whistlebuoy patio halfway through that trip, and wrote most of the songs the couple of days before. It was during the pandemic, so people hadn’t been to shows in a while, and it was such a cool way to experience a crowd reaction to songs in such an early stage of the writing process. The shows in Alberta were a good test run to feel out our live show and really dial into what we wanted the show experience to be like for this project.
TE: At the end of April I had a chance to see the band live for the first time in quite a while and I noticed there was a lot of growth in the performance. I know you are both veterans when it comes to playing in bands but do you find having a defined vision of this project with what you are doing on stage and off helps keep the creative juices flowing?
Garrett: Absolutely, we both come from a pretty diverse performance background in other projects, but we know our strengths and how to build a show around that. I think we focus on having things sonically translate and doing so in a way that allows the audience to connect to the characters we wrote. There is a big difference between sounding good and being memorable, so we are trying hard to push ourselves to make people feel part of it.
TE: I know you and Robbie are busy guys but when can we expect to see the band perform in the Victoria area again?
Garrett: We have a pretty steady summer of releases heading into the Fall, so expect some announcements soon. Our next show is going to be on June 26th, behind Routine Coffee & Supply, for a little outdoor single release party.
TE: Who is Liz and what is her phone number?
Garrett: We’d tell you, but then we’d have to write another song.
TE: I was lucky enough to have you play a demo of Call Liz for me as well as hearing the final master before you released it into the world. It has one of the catchiest choruses in town right now – I’ve probably listened to it on repeat for the 30 minutes before this interview. I definitely find myself humming “Tell me that you want, tell me that you want it!” around the house.
It’s a great song and also going to be played on The Zone @ 91-3 all month long as your Band of the Month single. I know crafting this song was a labour of love. Can you elaborate on creating Call Liz.
Garrett: We appreciate that! It’s been a song we’ve been asked to release for a while now from some of our friends, and sometimes you have to give them what they want. The thing that sparked the concept of this song was actually from that show at The Duke, Robbie had someone throw her number on stage near the end of our set with this really sweet message apologizing to his partner if he had someone, and it was kind of this funny thing that we wanted to find a way to work into a song. We changed her name, but it’s quite close. It was honestly one of those songs that came together quickly. In our sessions, trying to finish other songs, I’ll sometimes get an idea and tell Robbie to stop and create a loop, and we’ll just do vocal passes over it until we get pieces we like and then organise the thoughts. This was one of those songs that kind of just “wrote itself” in the sense that Liz, as a character, had a lot to do with class and the illusion of opportunity vs reality in our world today. The big chorus is the contrast or the distraction of the whole thing, and the perception that if you want something enough, you’ll get it. We wanted something that straddled the line between pretty sounds and distorted tones.
TE: Is there more new music in the works? From all the great feedback I’ve seen about Call Liz – it seems like people want more Alcoves.
Garrett: We will be following this up with a new EP this Fall – expect another single this Summer.
TE: Garrett, I know you are a huge Formula 1 fan… Who do you think is going to win the Canadian Grand Prix race later this month in Montreal? I’m so disappointed I’m going to be missing it by two days, but it explains why hotels were so expensive.
Garrett: It’s true, my dad got me into it when I was young. I remember having this sick gold F1 model car that I covered in really bad holographic stickers. I gotta go with my man, Oscar. Big Piastri fan. I’d love to go one day, but I used to go to the Edmonton Indy races when they were a thing, and I gotta say sitting in the rain on tiny metal bleachers is not as fun as it sounds.
TE: Alcoves, I’m thrilled you are The Zone’s Band of the Month for June. I can’t think of a band more deserving of being part of the program, congratulations once again.
Garrett: We are thankful to be part of it, thank you!
June 2025’s Band of the Month, Alcoves is asking you to pick up the phone to, Call Liz, on The Zone @ 91-3 all month long. The song is available for download, along two other songs, and more window dressing photos from Rocktographers, on their Band of the Month microsite.
Rocktographers is a proud supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.