Boyhood — the bedroom-pop project of Caylie Runciman, hailing from rural Ontario — has signed to Hand Drawn Dracula, and to celebrate she’s dropped a new single that hits like a half-remembered teenage daydream: A Grand Time.
The track digs into the lopsided dynamic of a relationship between a young person and a much older man, with Runciman murmuring lines like “I was just a kid, hanging up pictures with electrical tape” — a perfect distillation of the Boyhood ethos: DIY anthems that feel both achingly familiar and slightly alien, like childhood wonder turned sideways. Tough-kid guitar grit meets vintage synths and deadpan delivery, and somehow it all adds up to the strange, specific feeling of growing up.
From Ottawa Punk Shows to Festival Stages
Runciman cut her teeth in Ottawa’s punk scene before Boyhood took its current shape, and since then she’s quietly built a catalog of lauded releases while playing festivals across North America, including Sled Island, NXNE, and Pop Montreal.
Her 2022 record ‘My Dread’ was a one-woman show start to finish — written, performed, produced, and engineered entirely by Runciman — and doubled as a kind of musical diary for her introduction to motherhood. Mixed by Kenny Gilmore (Julia Holter, Weyes Blood), the album earned praise as a moving collection of perfect pop songs that feel classic, lived-in, and raw, per Gorilla vs. Bear.
A Bedroom Record Born From Chaos
The new, forthcoming Boyhood album — out via Hand Drawn Dracula — came together while Runciman was, in her words, “imploding with life changes and experiencing a real magical rebirth through the chaos.” Rather than running from it, she leaned in, recording most of the album on her bed, surrounded by old drum machines and a battered Casio keyboard.
Tape delay became a key tool, with choppy, cycling soundscapes wrapping around her wry, indelible lyrics to reveal a new dimension of the project. As she puts it: “I really found myself again with this record.”
“A Grand Time”: Adolescence, Stilted and Slurred
You can hear that process at full tilt on A Grand Time, a stilted reflection on adolescence that pulls you straight into your own messy feelings of change and rebirth. Runciman’s insistent voice slurs through lines like “I was just a kid / I’d throw around my flip phone / on a long walk home / through a construction zone,” landing somewhere between confession and daydream.
Like Cate Le Bon or Aldous Harding, her lyrics feel playfully circumspect — meandering alongside sideways guitar licks and a pulsing bassline that never quite sits still. The black-and-white, Lynchian music video (dir. Monika Kraska) leans into that unease, dropping Runciman into a world with no other people in it: wandering suburbs, standing alone in an empty living room, making self-reflection look — and feel — perfectly askew.
Like a candy shop in a seedy part of town, Boyhood songs run on equal parts ecstasy and heartbreak. Consider this single a black-magic invitation: age, reflect, and be reborn.
Upcoming Performances
June 23 — Albany, NY — Tummy Rub Records
June 24 — Cambridge, MA — The Sinclair w/ Of Montreal
June 25 — Philadelphia, PA — Dead Birds
June 26 — New York, NY — House Show
June 27 — Burlington, VT — Radio Bean
July 25 — Toronto, ON — Dina’s Tavern
July 27 — Ottawa, ON — Irene’s
July 28 — Montreal, QC — Sala Rossa
July 30 — Fredericton, NB — Bellwether
July 31 — Sackville, NB — Sappyfest
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