Want to get our stories Straight to your inbox (see what we did there)? Sign up for our newsletter here.

In a word, Dust Cwaine’s year has been “wild.” 

As a fixture of Vancouver’s drag scene with their long-running Commercial Drag show, Cwaine—or David Cutting, as they’re known out of drag—has been creating music for a while. 

But, as Cwaine tells the Straight over Zoom from their home in Vancouver, performing their new songs live is incredible. “I have this feeling of my dreams coming true. Just remembering back to being a child and wanting this to be what I became, and having this very intense realization that I was doing it.” 

Their debut album, Arcana, was recorded at Helm Studios in Olympic Village and released this September. It represents a significant shift in their art: less club mega-mix “beeps and boops” that listeners might associate with drag music and more “radio 90s familiarity.” 

Big sonic inspirations include Matchbox 20 and Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind and Train circa 1995 to 2000. The vibe is the kind of major-label San Fran pop-rock that soundtracked The Goofy Movie and Digimon: The Movie. And yet, Arcana sounds new and fresh, with a distinctly queer perspective on the genre. 

“When it comes to identity, it’ll always sort of live at the heart of my storytelling,” says Cwaine, who is queer, non-binary and aromantic. Their songs engage with different kinds of close relationships, and challenge the notion that love songs have to be strictly romantic. “If I’m going to write songs about relationships, why not have it be about my deep, intimate relationships that I have with my friends?”

Cwaine’s music feels like snapshots of specific moments as they weave vignettes of their life into the lyrics. There’s a pervasive sense of not quite fitting into society’s expectations that runs through the album.

Synthy single “Aliens in LA,” a song about two of Cwaine’s close friends, celebrates that “our intergalactic fat bodies are too political for these botox hotties,” while country-tinged “In the End” reminisces about being “at Burning Man, sharing a cigarette with a friend / Thinking about the default world on which I depend.” 

The Burning Man festival itself holds deep meaning for Cwaine: their first trip to the Black Rock Desert at age 22 inspired their drag name. 

The desert is covered in “clouds of dust, and it gets into everything,” they say. “Once you’re done there, even after you wash your body, the dust comes out of your pores.” Cwaine, meanwhile, was an attempt to bastardize “Queen” into a last name that Facebook deemed acceptable.

That’s not to say every song on Arcana is a joyful bop. The nine-track album is also structured like a tarot reading, with three songs each tied to cards like The Tower (which can represent change, chaos, or revelation), Death (endings, transformation), and The Star (hope, faith, or spiritual renewal). 

“Saturn,” the final song of the Death card trilogy, is about Cwaine’s father and the grief they experienced after his death. It’s a rich tapestry of little familial memories: “I remember the whisper of the spring breeze / Rustling gently through the pine trees / Bob Seger crooning down on mainstreet / Cooked eggs on a fire felt like a small feat.” 

Cwaine says they struggled to record the song. “We just did it in one take, and that’s what’s on the album.” 

“Unicorn River Child,” the gentle album closer that Cwaine wrote in the midst of “mental health anguish that [they were] drowning in,” is a song they wrote for themselves. They wrote the lyrics while at Lynn Canyon on a cold January day, surrounded by friends. Nature, as a grounding force, helped them to find their way back to themself.

“I like to be near the river. That’s, like, my favourite place in the whole entire world,” Cwaine says. “I think people read it as a love song, which is great … But the chorus, the verses, are not a love song.” 

(I’m not convinced that’s true. It is a love song, as there’s few things more radical than gently loving yourself.)

Despite—or perhaps because of—the personal nature of their lyrics, Cwaine says they’ve received a lot of positive feedback from people relating to their songs. 

And just as listeners resonate with their music, Cwaine resonates with other queer musicians’ songs as well. They mention late trans hyperpop music icon SOPHIE, and local artists like PLEASEBENiCE or TWiiNWALKER, as artists they really connect with. 

“I sit and cry to all of these artists’ music, because I feel heard in it. I feel me in it,” Cwaine says. 

Since releasing Arcana, Cwaine has signed on to Sad Kids Collective, alongside fellow local musicians Adam Mah, Josh Eastman and Shane Stephenson. They have a manager now. 2023 promises more shows with a full band, or maybe even more music exploring other instruments like strings and brass. 

Arcana was made with a team of predominantly queer creatives: PLEASEBENiCE co-produced “Hearts in Atlantis,” while Calgary rapper Tea Fannie has a verse on “Innuendo.” Cwaine is keen to carry on working with other queer talent around the city, and the country, to make music that makes people feel heard.

“There’s a big emergence in Vancouver right now of queer musicians, guitar players, drummers, producers, writers, just song artists in general—and I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Dust Cwaine’s debut album Arcana is out now.