Kaia Kater has covered a lot of traumatic topics on her past albums, and to some extent that pattern continues on Strange Medicine. But she’s coming at it from a different perspective now.
“There was this feeling that if I want to write a song like ‘Both Sides Now’ or ‘Clouds,’ I have to put myself through hell. If I want to write anything good, I have to be traumatized,” Kater said. “In 2016 I wrote a song called “Rising Down” which was about police violence against black people. That was a really important song to me and to a certain extent it was very cathartic to write, but I also didn’t think about the fact I’d have to sing it each night.”
She’s progressed on this album as a result of reexamining her assumption. In “Floodlights,” Kater dredges up an age gap relationship she entered as a 17 year old. But this time, she’s on stage singing and able to move past spotting a man who had once caused her pain. She’s also learned the difference between songs she wants to release and songs she writes simply to help her process things. They don’t necessarily all need to be released. A key test she’s instituted involves how she portrays the protagonists in her songs.
“I think I’m much more keen to give whatever character it is in my song some kind of agency, so that when I sing it each night there is more of a 3D look at what life experience is. It’s complicated.”
It’s that type of reframing that makes Strange Medicine go down a lot easier for both Kater and the listener. The targeted woman in “The Witch” is standing up to her accusers, something that feels pointed even with the sweet harmony vocals of Aoife O’Donovan. Burned to death, the character still lets off lines like “I’ll stitch myself back together again” and “I’ll see you soon and hunt you then.”
“Fedón,” which tells the story of a Grenadian abolitionist and revolutionary, does not focus on the fact his revolution failed. Instead, it spotlights his bravery, ingenuity, and the eventual triumph of his ideals. “Something’s blooming/I can hear it,” Kater sings.
“It had to have this pulsing war-like energy and it had to have forward momentum. It had to be something you look to when you feel discouraged,” Kater said of the song, noting that it feels good to share a story of a marginalized person standing up to the system rather than suffering under it. “Maybe what he really understood is that in 300-400 years his mission would be accomplished. It’s this kind of faith that you lose the battle but not the war.”
“Maker Taker,” the song that frames Kater’s prior need to highlight trauma in her songs as pressure from record executives and critics, is an airy battle cry: “I’ll starve those hungry ghosts/Play what I know about hope/and confusion and laughing in tour vans.”
“In Montreal,” a highlight featuring fellow Canadian Allison Russell, presents that hope through growth. Kater sings to her younger self about ways she could improve, it’s implied that growth has occurred because she’s the one suggesting it. And therefore her problems in the present day seem likely to be solved.
Perhaps certain critics may prefer unadulterated trauma, but pay attention to popular culture and it’s full of stories more like strange medicine. The average movie certainly has trauma or danger to overcome, but for the most part, the audience craves stories where the good guys win. People are looking to live vicariously through those victories, to be inspired by those coming of age stories like “In Montreal.”
There is one song on the record that breaks with the theme of agency. “Often As The Autumn,” a ghost story about a shadowy force picking off livestock one by one repurposed by Kater, takes us back to a time when not many of us had much control over what was going on.
“I think at that point we were three years deep into the pandemic,” Kater said. “I was 26 and I had all these plans and I felt like it was so unfair that there was so much death all around me. I was in New York when it started and I remember seeing those trucks. I felt like I was a human subjected to some biblical wrath. I think I needed something scary to recon with.”
The sound of the track is ridiculously cool, built from an untuned viola and a children’s sized pump organ and a vocal track without and room sound. Kater still gives agency to one character in the song, though it’s not the terrified women or the sheep.
“I wanted this one to be the listener sitting with the inevitability of death. I think the creature is particular because it’s not motivated by good and evil,” Kater said. “I actually have a lot of affection for the creature. Whenever I sing, I feel conviction kind of like I identify with the protagonists in the other songs. I think the creature is telling it like it is, and there’s something cool about that.”
Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Kaia Kater and the songs we discussed, starting with Maker Taker, in which Kater explores and rejects the notion that she has to write songs from a place of trauma. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://kaiakater.com for more.
Country Pocket 