From sweet and stripped down to ethereal and cinematic, Canada-based musician Flower Face has been releasing music since the age of 14. On Sept. 27, she made her Los Angeles debut at the Moroccan Lounge in the Arts District, where she performed an intimate solo set featuring a mix of her older music, unreleased songs and newer tunes from her recent album, “The Shark In Your Water.”
Past the bohemian-style, dimly-lit bar at the entrance, the doors to the stage in the Moroccan Lounge led to a room full of fans who had been patiently awaiting Flower Face’s first L.A. performance. Throughout the show, the dedicated audience was singing along to her earlier songs and newer songs alike.
Ruby McKinnon, stage name Flower Face, started her career by making DIY records in her room. It wasn’t until she was 18 or 19 when her music took off and she realized she could pursue music as a career. Her latest album, “The Shark In Your Water,” features McKinnon’s intensely honest lyricism and hauntingly beautiful vocals from her older work, while giving the artist a new experience to professionally record this album with a team in Toronto.
“It’s very different from what I’m used to because before it was usually just me in my bedroom with my setup producing everything myself. This time I went into a bigger studio and had a whole production team and it was a faster process,” McKinnon said about her first foray in recording with a team. “I think bigger now in terms of sound because I see now that it’s more achievable. There’s only so much you can do at home. I now think more cinematic, I think more in layers.”
McKinnon said she wanted the feel of her album to be “big and dark, kind of scary and haunting.” She said the album could be described in two words: “haunted carnival.”
The title “The Shark in Your Water” comes from track one on the album, “Spiracle.” Although McKinnon’s standard process of writing is starting with the lyrics and then moving on to the melody, she wrote the instrumental track first for this song.
“I recorded this demo. It’s just layers and layers of different instruments and big strings. I just got my microphone and started singing over it. At the time, it felt like gibberish, but I ended up keeping all of the original lyrics because I feel like they found meaning afterwards,” McKinnon said. “One of them was ‘I want your parties, the shark in your water.’ Afterwards, I thought that actually kind of sums up the whole theme of the album in its entirety, which is the idea of loving someone in such a deep, insidious way that you want to be a good thing in their life, but you’re also the shark haunting them and following them forever.”
Early before the show started, two girls were waiting for the doors to open. One of the fans flew in for her birthday and gave bouquets of flowers to both McKinnon and her opening act, Olive Klug. Flower Face’s set included some unreleased songs from the beginning of her career, appeasing fans who have been dedicated listeners from the start.
“As much as it’s hard to look back on my old songs and it’s a little embarrassing, I feel like I owe the people who’ve been listening to me for that long to play them,” McKinnon said.
Though she has recently played some shows with a full band, she performed alone. The show was a celebration of her roots as an artist. Her stripped-down style initially drew in her fanbase at the start of her career.
“I feel a little nervous doing just me and a guitar tonight, but the people who have listened to me for so long, what they connected to is what I put out there from the very beginning, which is honest lyrics,” McKinnon said. “That’s always what’s been most important to me. I find that personally, I feel more connected to a crowd when it’s just me up there and I’m just putting across the songs in the simplest, most raw form. That’s what I’m going to put out there tonight, and I hope that people like it.”