B-Side Guys

Cole Dine makes a list because he knows nothing stays. The Pender Island-born multi-instrumentalist approaches “Evergreen” with the careful attention of someone documenting what matters before memory fades or circumstances shift. Hair, nose, smile, walk—all the things he’d miss if the balance ever broke. It’s romantic and pragmatic simultaneously, treating love as something worth inventorying not despite its impermanence but because of it.

The lyrics move through color transformations with seasonal logic: red and orange softening into blue and grey, peaks turning white, ground going black. But even through those shifts, the promise holds—loving in evergreen, the only constant available when everything else cycles through change. Dine’s vocal delivery carries the folk and soul influences he’s absorbed through years at Gulf Islands School of Performing Arts and his time traveling with a fiddle group to Finland’s Kaustinen Folk Festival. There’s a warmth here that comes from someone comfortable with multiple instruments—vocals, bass, guitar, violin—understanding how different elements can support a central melody.

The production maintains indie rock framework while leaving room for Dine’s broader musical vocabulary. Currently attending Nimbus School of Recording and Media in Vancouver after a year at Holland College (a Berklee sister school), he’s applied his developing production knowledge to create space for intimacy without overcrowding it. The arrangement understands when to strip back and when to build, particularly in the bridge where stillness in arms contrasts with fire burning between bodies, both conditions seen simply and clearly.

What distinguishes the track from typical love songs is its acknowledgment of witchcraft in darkness, of pollack stars weaving through black when eyes close. Dine treats romance as something that happens in dreams and reality simultaneously, where saying someone’s name becomes “the softest spell I know,” an ember held carefully. The balance in heart isn’t static—it’s something maintained through attention and recognition of fragility.

For someone passionate, dedicated, and ready to get groovy (his words), Dine has chosen to get tender instead on “Evergreen.” Part of the electrifying ensemble “29 East” and familiar with performing both solo and in groups, he’s crafted something that sits comfortably in the indie rock space while drawing from his folk, jazz, R&B, and soul foundations. The result feels lived-in rather than constructed, the sound of someone who knows that loving in evergreen doesn’t mean nothing changes—it means choosing to stay constant while everything else does.