Interview: Cruising With Devours

Cruising With Devours

The Vancouver pop iconoclast’s fifth album, Sports Car Era, is an ode to the male midlife crisis.

by Leslie Ken Chu

Photos by Jeff Cancade

Published on March 4, 2025

Jeff Cancade is playing the long game. “I think I will be one of those artists that will have like 10 albums,” the Vancouver musician best known as Devours since 2013 predicts. “I feel like I’m in that pocket now of being a long-career artist, always slightly under the radar. It’s very difficult to keep people’s interest. That’s why I’ve tried to change my look for every album or reinvent myself a little bit.”

Across four albums orbiting a collision of hyperpop, electroclash, and darkwave, Cancade has told the story of a “gaylien” action superhero fleeing the darkness of planet Urth, creating a utopia called Planet Devours, and ultimately returning to Urth when Planet Devours catches fire and explodes. Throughout their intergalactic journey, Cancade’s protagonist — invariably clad in gothic robes with BDSM accessories, a spiked crown and diamond beard mask and red scorched earth attire with their head painted cosmic colours to match — wrestles with ego death, toxic gay masculinity, body dysmorphia, and hopelessness. But they also find empowerment and liberation in baring their insecurities.

Devours’ latest reinvention comes on the heels of entering a new decade of life. 10 years ago, Cancade self-released their first Devours album, Late Bloomer. “It was about the anxieties of entering my 30s, feeling unstable career-wise and unaccomplished,” he says. “I just turned 40, and I’m feeling unstable and unaccomplished.” Despite the challenges of remaining independent to this day, they’ve forged their own path, cultivating a devoted following along the way. In 2024, Cancade also earned their first Polaris Prize longlist nomination, for Homecoming Queen.

At age 40, Cancade has naturally segued into a soft mentor role in Vancouver’s music scene. “It’s been a mixture of emotions,” they confess. “I went so many years wanting to have some sort of audience or spotlight. Then when you get it, you want to stay in it.” Instead of being bitter or jealous of younger artists getting more attention, though, “I’ve worked really hard these past few years to age gracefully in the scene. I try to be grateful for the opportunities people gave me in my 30s and pass the torch to younger people, especially visible minorities or people who are needing it more right now. It’s the cycle of life.”

Channeling their complicated feelings about turning 40 into their latest album, Sports Car Era (out March 14 via Surviving the Game, Cancade’s own label), they wondered, “What does a midlife crisis look like for Devours?” Thus, they found themselves posing on the album cover in a bathing suit resembling American Apparel swimwear. When Cancade lived in Montreal in their early 20s, the fast fashion brand confronted them on billboards across the city.

“I didn’t want to just put on a blazer and find a sports car or do it too literally in terms of the male-centric midlife crisis,” Cancade explains. “The album cover is me wanting to relive my youth. I’m always thinking about going back to Montreal and trying to be in the scene there again and be accepted this time. The cover isn’t meant to be a thirst trap. It’s meant to be this defiant punk stance: ‘I’m not commodifiable anymore. Here I am at 40 in a bathing suit, on a fucking podium. Take me or leave me.’”

Sports Car Era is darker and more deconstructed than Homecoming Queen, its polished predecessor intended to lift Cancade out of depression. “A lot of people in my life are getting divorced and changing careers, and 40 isn’t what they were picturing it being, and it’s the exact same for me,” he says. “My midlife crisis feels like lots of existential anxiety and confusion about direction, but I want the album to celebrate that and be like, ‘It’s okay to be messy. Just throw on an American Apparel bodysuit and get sloppy.’”