COLLECTION 6

151
“…Marina’s The Artist
is Present did play a role
in the desire
to be candid
on this album…”
KALTBLUT: When you first started the
project people weren’t really getting it
and said you should be playing acoustically
with instruments. What encouraged
you to push through and stick to
what you felt was right and what you
wanted to create?
Katie: I guess I just loved working with
electronic instruments. At the time,
it was different to what everyone else
was doing in Toronto and I preferred the
sounds and I enjoyed that I felt like I was
doing something unique. Of course, in
the rest of the world it wasn’t anything
special but in the city that I came from it
felt like I was doing something different.
KALTBLUT: You started Austra as a
“solo project” would you say its now as
collaborative as it’s ever been?
Katie: Yeah, it’s definitely very collaborative
now. Well I mean, the first record
Feel It Break was essentially a solo record
for the most part and then we kind
of formed this six person live band while
we were touring Feel It Break for a few
years. For the next record we kind of
wanted everybody to be involved in it,
so actually all six of us kind of played a
role. We made that album…even though
we’re currently touring Olympia; we’re
touring as a four piece. It was kind of in
that moment that we wanted to do that.
KALTBLUT: You’ve said you brought a
certain energy to the record from playing
live. Can you expand on this?
Katie: Well, the songs felt completely
different after touring with them for
two years than they did when I listened
to them on the album. When I listen to
Feel It Break right now it sounds a little
foreign to me in some ways. I definitely
think that playing them live we improved
on songs a lot …they gained a lot
of depth and a more interesting sound
palette. So we wanted to bring all those
characteristics forward in the new
record.
KALTBLUT: How does Olympia compare
to Feel It Break personally? How
does it feel looking back and seeing
where you are now?
Katie: Well for me, the biggest difference
is in the production. It went from
being a bedroom project to being a real
band project in a studio. There were so
many more people involved in the making
of Olympia than there were for Feel
It Break. We had lots of band members
who were contributing; we worked with
a lot of different engineers and my friend
Mike from the band Fucked Up had
some co-production credits on songs
so it just felt like a group effort whereas
Feel It Break felt like a much more personal
effort.
KALTBLUT: You have a background in
classical music and were previously an
opera singer. What elements from your
classical training have you brought to
Austra and specifically to this record?
Katie: I mean to be honest I try and
move away from the classical training
as much as I can. I haven’t really studied
classical music in like ten years but I’m
sure there’s lingering habits…it took a
while to move away from the classical
style of singing and to learn music in
a different way because classical music
has such a rigid way of playing and
understanding music and I find when
you’re writing music it kind of helps to
just ignore that. A lot of people who are
classical musicians if they are told to improvise
they just won’t know what to do,
and so I think it’s kind of dangerous to go
really far down that path.
KALTBLUT: You picked Owen Pallett
as an example of an artist cutting
through genre. Do you like to label
yourself as a crossover band?
Katie: Its really hard to label and identity
your own music. I think about us being
a crossover band and then I think there
are a lot of people listen to us who think
that we’re straight up electro (laughs)
Y’know, I don’t really have a proper perspective.
I mean I listen to certain songs
on the record and for me, the influences
are glaringly obvious and other people
would have no idea really. It’s hard to say.
KALTBLUT: The lyrics for both Home
and Forgive Me are blunt both lyrically
and musically. Obsessive, tense and
desperate for closure: they’re almost
like a plea to a lover. You’ve said before
you weren’t very good at writing lyrics
or didn’t use to be the focal point of
your creativity. How has it changed for
Olympia?
Katie: With Olympia I had the desire to
write more personal and more meaningful
lyrics. I really think the reason behind
that being… y’know after performing for