Since 2020’s Party of One EP, Toronto’s Alannah Kavanagh has grown tremendously as an artist. When she started Grizzly Coast at 22, she was playing confessional songwriter-style acoustic shows. Over time, Alannah got a band and they were scrappy – playing gigs and music they thought were fun without overthinking things. 

Recorded in just under two weeks, Alannah and her band meticulously explored ideas and made deliberate musical choices to create Grizzly Coast’s transformative debut album, Staying Power. By contrast, Party of One was recorded in one weekend without so much as creating a demo beforehand. 

The result of bucking down and taking things more seriously? An album that Alannah is incredibly proud of, one that sounds exactly how she envisioned it. Staying Power is a testament to growth, commitment, and the power of trusting oneself in the face of life’s uncertainties.

“Two Balloons” was inspired by Alannah’s relationship with her husband, Kyle, and features a video of gorgeous footage shot at the couple’s wedding. 

I liked the idea of calling us “Two Balloons.” I thought about kids at a carnival who get so excited to get a balloon, and then just forget about it and let it fly off into the skies, forgotten. The lyric “we are two lost balloons at heights they never knew” uses that imagery to portray how we were left behind by others, but in finding each other we reached new and unexpected heights. – Alannah Kavanagh