MUSICIAN CHANGES DIRECTION
Lyrics on latest album move away from trans artist’s overtly autobiographical material
Roughly a month before Greyhound Canada announced it would be cancelling most of its bus routes in Western Canada, Rae Spoon decided to learn how to drive.
It turned out to be a serendipitous decision for the Calgary-born singer-songwriter and author. Presumably, it was also a fairly monumental one. After all, Spoon had managed to make it to late-30s without a driver’s licence. By that point, the non-binary musician — who goes by the pronoun they — had spent nearly 20 years relying on Greyhound service for frequent treks on Canada’s tour circuit.
Granted, Greyhound will not cease operations in Western Canada until late- October, which means Spoon could have conceivably sneaked in one more bus tour. But, at the time of this interview, the musician was set to travel the country in a trusty Toyota Yaris promoting their ninth album, Bodies of water.
“It was like: ‘OK, the safety net is gone,’” says Spoon, in an interview with Postmedia from their home in Victoria, B.C. “‘You know how to drive. It’s time.’”
On the surface, this may not seem all that significant of a milestone. But much of Spoon’s initial identity as an artist seemed intrinsically linked to those early Greyhound tours, where they would fearlessly criss-cross Canada bashing out twangy country and folk in rural bars not known for being particularly friendly to trans artists.
In 2008, Spoon released their breakthrough record, Superioryouareinferior. Many of the songs were written during lonely trips on the Greyhound, producing an assured Canadian classic informed by literal and metaphorical landscapes and exploring themes of isolation, identity, prejudice and belonging. It helped usher in a wildly inventive and occasionally experimental period for the songwriter. The music continued to evolve, with Spoon straying further into electronic-pop terrain. They penned an autobiographical book of short stories and was the subject of the National Film Board documentary, My Prairie Home. Both were unflinching and personal, exploring how a Calgary childhood surrounded by family dysfunction, religious fervour and mental illness helped shape them as an artist.
Ten years later, Spoon recognizes the period around Superior as both a significant turning point and place to revisit, albeit now as a less-transient 30-something musician who has traded in their bus tickets for a Yaris and found a healthier balance between work and home life.
“I tried to go back more to more landscape-based stuff and really wrote about the stuff around me,” says Spoon. “When I was writing Superior, I was touring a lot around Canada. With the new record, I was writing about where I live now.”
So, for the first time since Superior, Spoon did not return to Calgary to record, opting instead to enlist Montreal’s Land of Talk bassist Laurie-Anne Torres as producer and decamp to The Noise Floor Recording Studio on B.C.'s Gabriola Island with Saskatoon’s Melissa Gan, who performs under the name respectful-child, and Vancouver musician Terri Upton. Sonically, the album drifts away from the electronic dance-pop sounds of Spoon’s recent records and returns to the more singersongwriter-styled pop of Superior.
“Gabriola Island is beautiful,” says Spoon. “We would record our 12-hour or whatever day and then we’d run out to the beach. We were all staying there and that gave us a lot more focus. As you can hear, it has a real relaxed sound to it. At least for me anyway.”
Still, while it’s not really a concept album, Spoon’s songs do hover around a loose, overarching theme that is not particularly relaxed. Some of the songs, such as the ominous It’s Getting Close and Bioluminescent, are downright apocalyptic in their depictions of climate change and environmental ruin.
“You can see the connection between how water is legislated, that kind of control, and there’s also that with people’s bodies,” Spoon says. “That’s the connection I was making.”
In the past 10 years, Spoon’s work has often used personal stories to illuminate larger issues of gender politics. But after their 2012 book of short stories First Spring Grass Fire and the 2013 soundtrack to My Prairie Home, Spoon seems to have moved on from overtly autobiographical material, at least for now.
Whatever the case, the lyrics on Bodies of water seem more direct and outward-looking than any of Spoon’s past work. The synthpop dirge You Don’t Do Anything is aimed at politicians who have proven ineffectual on environmental matters, while In My Town is a timely rebuke of arts communities that haven’t done enough to address sexual violence and harassment. It’s Not in My Body seems at first to address the issues of gender binary and gender roles Spoon explored along with Ivan E. Coyote in the 2014 book Gender Failure, but Spoon says the message is a more universal one about body image.
“It’s something I wrote about a
lot of things,” Spoon says. “About how we are all judging each other based on how we look and what we see. I tried to step outside the nonbinary idea and think about bodies in general. It’s not just non-binary people that have problems coming out of that trend.”
Lyrically, the album veers from despair to hopefulness. The latter is best reflected in the defiant Do Whatever The Heck You Want, a soaring anthem that Spoon initially wrote to perform with Leeds punk band Jesus and the Judgemental Father. The initial version contained a decidedly less-wholesome swear than ‘heck’ in the catchy choruses. But as Spoon toured folk festivals, they dropped the F-words to make it more family-friendly. The “swear version” will eventually come out, but, for now, Spoon decided to follow the advice of Canuck icon and friend Carole Pope, who suggested the 60 f-bombs dropped in the original version might just damage the song ’s commercial potential.
“She said ‘You can’t have a hit with the F-word in it,’” Spoon says. “Which is actually true. Not that many F-words, anyway. It’s a lot of them. It’s not like you can bleep them out. The song wouldn’t make sense if you bleeped them out.”
Spoon is currently touring Canada with respectful-child, which brings them back to Calgary for two hometown shows on Wednesday and Thursday at the King Eddy. It’s been 20 years since Spoon played their first gig and more than 15 since they first packed up their banjo and guitar and left Calgary to pursue a music career. The current tour will take Spoon from Victoria to Halifax.
“I thought I’d go back and act like it’s 20 years ago and see what happens,” Spoon says with a laugh. “It’s OK, I’m actually training. I’m going to the gym every day. So I’ll be ready for the tour. You gotta keep spry.”