Spotlight: New Confidence and Having a Healthy Relationship with Creativity in Cruza’s new EP 'Dog Daze'

 

☆ BY MAYA MATHUR

Photo By Vivian Bauer

 
 

“I was always interested in sad scenes from movies and television as a kid,” Adam Kain shares with me after we commiserate over our shared experiences of poor mental health during quarantine. He would ruminate on the feelings these scenes invoked, generating empathy through understanding debilitating emotions. 

This desire to understand and empathize is prevalent in the music Cruza creates. AJ Roth and Charity Joy Brown join Kain to connect with their audience and create a space to cultivate unity and understanding among young adults. From doomed romances, general anxiety over getting older and the complex dilemma of pursuing art in a capitalist society, the amalgam of a young adult’s daily worries and troubles are accurately represented through melancholic tones and lyrics about these shared human experiences.

“As young adults, it’s hard to remember that our dreams are still worth it,” Kain says. “Whether you’ll be successful, if it’s worth the anxiety and stress or putting any energy towards a creative pursuit at all-- these are all things that we’ve been stressed about.”

Kain would know - especially having to work full-time throughout the pandemic. “Everyday seemed more high-stress, so being creative was the last thing on my mind.” It was a struggle to mesh an overarching anxiety of a pandemic society with creative anxieties, but they persevered.

They were nervous when meeting Brown, who they had met online, but when she arrived from San Diego, it was kismet. “We feed off each other’s energy when we’re together and it makes the creative experience so much better,” Kain says. The flow of creativity and inspiration was vast and everything had fallen into place. 

Cruza has just finished accompanying Puma Blue on his East Coast leg of his tour, and being able to perform live in various states has shown them how many “Cruzers” (the term coined for their fans) are out there. The outpouring of love and support from fans was soothing to any performance anxiety they had and they can’t wait for 2022’s new opportunities.

From improvising entire new songs on stage and working just so well in tandem, Cruza has shown the magnitude of their talent and desire to succeed. Their new album Dog Daze is out now, and with it a new confidence from Cruza - and hopefully a tour.

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