Praise for Victoria and Slowly, It Dawns

“On Slowly, It Dawns, the tunes are strong and the lyrics are witty, but it’s Canal’s candour that is most striking.”

 – The Guardian

"This album is exquisite... She is really someone to keep an eye on... Without question, [Slowly, It Dawns is] one of the most remarkable debuts I've heard in a long time."

- NPR Music

“Canal’s ascendant career is built on her ability to unflinchingly capture feelings… she seems on the brink of something bigger.”  

– The New Yorker 

“The prodigiously talented Victoria Canal’s debut album, Slowly, It Dawns, is a striking document of your twenties told through hedonistic pop songs and regretful ballads." 

- Rolling Stone UK 

 "‘Slowly, It Dawns’ – with its intense highs, profound lows, anthemic pop elements and those more restrained emo moments – is only the beginning of the rest of her career." 

- NME

"With her lush, textured vocal harmony beds, a blend of minimalist and maximalist production, and a clear narrative, Slowly, It Dawns invites listeners into a world that represents both the Victoria Canal we know and the artist we will continue to discover." 

- Forbes

 “A fearless freedom of expression… takes listeners to a place where, governed by a blustering beat, they can close their eyes, dance, and fantasize.” 

- Ones To Watch

“Capable of delivering with a clarity that can stop time, she’s in possession of a raw, unvarnished truth that forces you to pause and really listen – which is exactly what her debut album ‘Slowly It Dawns’ demands.” 

– Dork

January 17, 2025: Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Victoria Canalhas released her anticipated debut album Slowly, It Dawns today via Parlophone / Elektra Records. 

The 12-song collection, co-produced by Canal with Eg White (Adele, Kylie Minogue, Sam Smith) and Kevin Farzad (Clinton Kane), finds the 26-year-old Spanish-American musician embarking on a path that mirrors the unravelling of the human experience. “Life does feel like the sun rising,” she shares of the record’s evocative title. “You come into the world with very little clarity on the way things are – everything's a little hazy and confusing. Then, as you get older, your eyes adjust to what life is; it gets messy and complicated, then spiritual and expansive.”   

Written over the course of three years and recorded between London and Los Angeles, the album captures this sentiment as much musically as it does lyrically: Canal’s stunning range is on full display across each of the genre-blurring tracks. The culmination of a lifetime of musical knowledge, experimentation and a fearless approach to her craft, Canal’s debut album marks a new chapter: a moment of newfound clarity about the artist she wants to be.

Listen to Slowly, It Dawns (out now)  

The focus track today, “Vauxhall,” which premiered on BBC Radio 2 last night, is the final single in the album’s narrative arc. The mid-point of the album, it marks a rebirth of sorts, where “hangxiety breeds resurrection.” The story begins with the flirtatious summer’s day of “June Baby,” turning to night with the sweaty and experimental “California Sober” into the early hours of the next morning with “Cake,” hiding in the excesses of escapism. Coming down from the high, we reach the spacey self-doubt of album highlight track “15%,” and “Vauxhall” follows as the sun rises over a new day, new beginnings and new possibilities.

The official visualiser for “Vauxhall” sees Canal weigh up the often confusing and conflicting paths available to us in life. The song explores a mid-twenties crossroad between following her dreams of career success, despite the struggle this entails, and leaving it all behind to settle down into a quieter, more conventional life. Ultimately, as the song’s climax suggests, there was never any choice for her: music was always her path. 

Watch the official visualiser for “Vauxhall”  

2024 marked a landmark year for Canal, finally sharing music from her debut album, touring worldwide on her headline ‘Just What I Needed’ tour, winning her second Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, and appearing to sing and play piano on “Paradise” with Coldplay at Glastonbury Festival. She also sang backing vocals on three songs on the band’s 2024 album Moon Music. The release of her debut album sees Canal embark on her Slowly, It Dawns headline tour through February and March, including a night at NYC’s Brooklyn Made on February 20 and LA’s Troubadour on March 18.

Slowly, It Dawns tracklist

June Baby

Talk

California Sober

Cake

15%

Vauxhall

How Can I Be A Person?

Totally Fucking Fine

Hollow

Barely

Black Swan

swan song



About Victoria Canal:  

 26-year-old Spanish-American singer, songwriter and producer Victoria Canal makes soul-stirring, emotive pop music. Canal says her international upbringing fostered her love for a nomadic life in music. A ‘third culture kid,’ she lived everywhere from Shanghai, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, and Dubai to Atlanta, New York, and Forth Worth, and is proud of her identity as a queer, disabled, mixed-heritage woman.  

Canal is the recipient of two Ivor Novello Awards, recognising her songwriting talent, an Attitude Pride award and an Imagen Award nomination for her television acting debut in acclaimed Apple TV+ anthology series Little America.   

In 2022 Canal released her EP Elegy, which delicately dealt with themes of grief and death, and featured the single “swan song,” which was performed live on Later… with Jools Holland, appearing alongside the likes of Self Esteem and The 1975.  Her Ivor Novello Award winning sister song “Black Swan” features on her 2023 EP WELL WELL, which found Canal turning the lens back on herself to look inwards with courage and vulnerability, in turn receiving acclaim from The New Yorker, The Observer, The Times, NME, BBC Radio 1 and more.

2024 saw Canal announce her long-awaited debut album Slowly, It Dawns, tour worldwide and appear on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage during Coldplay’s headline set to play piano and sing on “Paradise.”

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For more information please contact:

Taylor Perry at Shore Fire Media (US Press) - tperry@shorefire.com 

Katie Pilbeam at Chalk Press Agency (Ex-US press) - katie@chalkpressagency.co.uk