SPOON EXPLORES MENTAL HEALTH ON 10TH STUDIO ALBUM
Artist takes holistic approach to strive for hope and address stigma
It might be tempting to think that the urgency Rae Spoon felt when recording their 10th album, Mental Health, stemmed from some cathartic need to tell their story.
After all, the deeply personal record comes less than a year after Spoon’s 2018 album, the environmentally themed and more outwardly political Bodiesofwater. Even for the hard-working and prolific Spoon, this is an unusually quick turnaround.
The need for emotional release may have played a part, Spoon acknowledges. But the Calgary-born, non-binary singer-songwriter, who prefers to use the pronoun “they,” also had decidedly pragmatic reasons to record the album with laser-focused efficiency.
“I wrote it pretty fast because there are these grants in B.C. and there was a deadline,” says Spoon with a laugh, in a phone interview from their home in Victoria. “I had to get the album out by Sept. 1. I ended up writing seven songs in three weeks on the record, which is something I haven’t done before.”
This is not to suggest that Spoon was flippant about the album or its occasionally harrowing subject matter. The cover art alone — which features a line of sullen figures marching into the gaping, fiery jaws of a monstrous blue beast — suggests Spoon was interested in exorcising a few demons with the album.
But it does point to a certain proficiency they have achieved in the past decade when it comes to writing witheringly personal accounts, even when it involved fearlessly returning to the coming-of-age trauma Spoon endured growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family plagued by mental illness.
Adopting a slightly lower register in their singing voice, Spoon addresses everything from the horrors of insomnia (poppy first single I Can’t Sleep), to intergenerational trauma (Inheritance), self-deception (the gorgeous ballad Blaring) and crippling shame (the appropriately named Shame) over eight songs, wrapping them all in their hallmark strong melodies and pop hooks.
“It was a lot of my own personal experiences and growing up with a lot of mental illness within my family,” says Spoon, whose Canada-wide tour will bring them to Calgary’s King Eddy on Sept. 14. “But also, (I belong) to communities that have a higher chance of mental health stuff. So I thought, with my audience, it was a good thing to write about. I see a lot about mental health in marketing campaigns as a buzzword. But I wanted to look into other sides of it.”
Mental Health also reflects another chapter in Spoon’s sonic evolution. Prior to their 2008 breakthrough, Superioryouareinferior, the singer-songwriter played mostly straight-ahead country and folk. But for the past decade, Spoon’s albums have adopted a more nuanced mix of electro and dance-pop, while maintaining the dark pathos of singer-songwriter fare.
To record Mental Health, Spoon returned to the Noise Floor, the same Gabriola Island recording studio where they recorded Bodiesofwater. But this time around, they enlisted the help of Vancouver’s garage-rock duo Pack A.D. who gave Spoon’s songs an added indie-rock jolt.
“I just thought the album could really use their guitar and drum vibe,” says Spoon. “It was really fun. I like working with people who are already in bands and used to playing together a lot. A lot of it is still based on electronic drums, keeping the time. But I really wanted the live rock element in it.”
Spoon’s eclectic output over the years has often offered autobiographical details that address wider issues within the LGBT community. Spoon’s trilogy of records that first marked the second phase of their career — 2008’s Superioryouareinferior, 2010’s Love is a Hunter and 2012’s I Can’t Keep All of Our Secrets — explored identity, love and belonging in the transgender community. Chelsea Mcmullan’s 2014 musical documentary My Prairie Home and its soundtrack chronicled Spoon’s upbringing. While ostensibly fictional, their first book of short stories — 2012’s First Spring Grass Fire — followed a queer Calgary protagonist named Rae, whose troubled upbringing under a volatile, ultrareligious patriarch leads to pill-popping, eating disorders and other acts of self-destruction.
While Spoon never intended the songs of Mental Health to be overtly didactic, they do think the songs could be hopeful to people going through similar experiences.
“There’s always this kind of cure idea for health things,” says Spoon. “I think it’s more about the process of just living with issues, maybe a more holistic look at it. So I hope people can find spaces for themselves in the songs, even though it would be from my personal experiences. Maybe they can find hope in the fact that you don’t have to be cured to live another day, and for people with mental health issues it’s the same as having physical health issues. So it’s about talking about it more and having less stigma about things being recurring. I know it’s a lifelong thing for a lot of people.”
Mental Health is available Friday.