Premiere: Empty Nesters - “Beijing Bikini”

Written By Jeff MacCallum

We are excited to premiere a track from an act that’s new to us! We love discovering new bands and Montreal’s Empty Nesters fits that description. To our surprise we learned that this project has been around for nearly a decade!

Eric Liao is the force behind the band which has explored many different sounds since their inception. Earlier explorations included shoegaze, indie-rock, and ambient music but now Liao is finding a new direction that is rooted in hardcore.

The single we are premiering today is called “Beijing Bikini” which is a reference to his heritage as a Chinese and Vietnamese Canadian. The term refers to a Chinese cultural phenomenon where men expose their midrift by lifting up their shirts to help cool them down during the humidity.

The song starts with a sludgy, doom-metal-esque intro that bursts into an explosion of hardcore adjacent metal as the band continues to explore heavy music while contributing to greater Asian representation within Canada’s punk and hardcore scenes.

Check it out below and please consider supporting Empty Nesters by purchasing their music.

Jeff MacCallum

Jeff MacCallum is our founder. He created Cups N Cakes simply because he had a love of local music. Soon the platform grew beyond the confines of his scene in Edmonton to include all of Canada.

"I did it all very DIY. Everything you see was me learning on the fly. I'm a carpenter not a musician, or a journalist, or a publicist... I'm a carpenter and a weird crazy music fan that thought he could do something fun that might benefit something I care about"

Over the years, MacCallum's commitment to elevating Canadian music earned him a spot as a Polaris Prize Juror, a WCMA Juror, a consultant for music festival curation, and a dear friend to independent music in Canada.

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Premiere: Shiv and the Carvers - “Executionary”