Having grown obsessed with opera in high school, Katie Stelmanis is aware of the saying that the purest voice is that of a baby crying. She’d taken singing lessons before, but they never allowed her to access that emotional openness like the course taught by the ex-opera singer Fides Krucker during the pandemic, when she was starting to face some issues with her singing. The first 15 minutes of the class are spent yawning in a circle, and “by the end of it,” Stelmanis says, “we’re all crying, your nose is running, your sinuses are cleared.” It’s evocative of the image on the cover of her majestic new Austra album, Chin Up Buttercup, which traces her journey of grieving the end of a relationship by translating its chaotic emotions through the lens of Greek tragedy, the euphoria of Eurodance, and science fiction that overwhelms with its humanity. These filters do nothing to restrain the purity of Stelmanis’ performances, embodied equally in their humour, brokenness, and hope. “I don’t wanna cry about you forever,” she sings on ‘Look Me in the Eye’, not hiding the time it’s taken to get there; savouring the yawn instead of rushing into a new day.

We caught up with Austra to talk about Madonna’s Ray of Light, the five stages of grief, Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound, and other inspirations behind her new album Chin Up Buttercup.

‘get 2 kno’ by 1995 Epilepsy

This is one of those enigmatic releases on the World Music Label. I’m not really sure who’s behind it, but it kind of reminds me of Tirzah. 

What’s really interesting about this song is I don’t remember how I found it, but I stumbled upon it in 2020 and was just listening to it a lot. Production-wise, it probably influenced the song on my record called ‘Blindsided’. I loved the instrumentation, but the harmonies and the chord progressions in that song are also so interesting. I had always listened to it kind of not really thinking about who made it – I was just like, “Oh, it’s this random producer in the UK,” which is just full of millions of really talented random producers. [laughs] And then I was like, “If I’m doing this interview, I should research a bit more about this track, because I’m probably going to have to talk about it.” And then I found out that it’s Mica Levi.

I saw that it was rumoured, but didn’t know it was confirmed.

I went down a Reddit hole so that it was actually confirmed. I saw that bar italia confirmed it [Mica Levi is on production and Tirzah on vocals]. I’m a big fan of Mica Levi’s work, and they’re one of the most respected producers/composers in the world right now. They’re making some of the most interesting scores, and anyone who makes music, especially in the UK, is just very enamored by what they do. And I sometimes feel like when your reputation precedes you, it’s hard to know when you’re listening to music if you actually like it, or if you’re just very influenced by this reputation. It’s hard to listen to it from a completely non-biased perspective. I think it’s really rare to be able to consume music in that anonymous way in this day and age, and it just says something about who Mica Levi is as a musician that their music transcends their reputation. It connects with people in a very real way that goes beyond how the world perceives them.

There’s been quite a gap between Austra albums, but you’ve worked on music outside the context of the project. Is scoring a means of working outside the constraints of this world that you’ve created? Do you think about releasing music more anonymously? 

Scoring was such a huge relief, because it allowed me to accept the fact that Austra doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all of everything I do. Austra is essentially an indie pop – I have to say indie because it’s not that popular – project, and I feel like, because my background is not quite that, I’ve always had this resistance to fully embrace this pop idea. But when I started scoring, I realized that I could do all of these things with different outlets, and that it was a lot easier to accept Austra for what it was and go deeper into this pop world as opposed to trying to make music that impresses people in some other way. I don’t feel like I should have to do that.

Getting dumped (or the five stages of grief)

In many ways, Chin Up Buttercup, avoids the traditional ideas of healing, but it does seem to use the five stages of grief as a kind of map. I’m curious how intentional you were about that informing the arc of the album.

I definitely wasn’t thinking about the five stages of grief until after the album was finished. While I was making it and putting the songs together, I had a sense that there was a lot of chaos in the music. There was a non-linear progression that just felt all over the place. It wasn’t until later that I realized the whole album is essentially a blueprint for the five stages of grief. It swings between depression and anger, and my favorite one is the bargaining phase. The song ‘Fallen Cloud’, for example, where I’m talking about my ex changing who she is just a little bit so that we fit together better – there’s something humorous about that, but also quite sad at the same time, because it’s this desperate plea to just try and make things work, when obviously it’s not going to work. It wasn’t until later that I was like, “Oh, this is one of the stages.” I appreciate making that connection, because it makes the album feel less chaotic, and it makes it feel like it actually makes sense.

Do you feel like the making of the songs was less linear than how they’re structured?

People say when you’re experiencing the five stages of grief, it’s never linear. You wake up one day, you’re angry, you wake up one day, you’re serene and fully accept what’s happened, and then the next day you’re depressed. I would say it’s almost an hour-to-hour experience. In my writing process, that was definitely the case. There is some amount of linear narrative, I suppose. The first song that I wrote was ‘Blindsided’, which I think best describes what happened. I actually wrote that within the first two weeks of the breakup, so that was the most raw reflection. And then, I think the last one was probably ‘Hopefulness of Dawn’, which is the acceptance moment. In that sense, it has a beginning and an end, but the middle is just all over the place.

The album bio comes with a Louise Erdrich quote about how solitude can break you with its yearning. Do you feel like that breakage, that yearning, was creatively inspiring to the point that it was almost a comfortable place to sit in? 

I would like to say no, but I think that would be a dishonest answer. When someone goes through an intense feeling of heartbreak, we are resistant to fully letting go, because in some ways, the yearning is the last thread of connection. If you stop the yearning, then officially everything is gone, everything is severed. So even though it’s not a reciprocated relationship at this point, just being the one person who remains connected means that there is still a connection. In that sense, it’s easy to dwell in it for longer than is probably healthy. I spent a long time in that stage of yearning, and I often question whether or not there’s anything I could have done differently. I don’t know if part of it was because I was making an album about it. There were outside factors, like the pandemic, that contributed to how it just extended far beyond the length of time I ever imagined it would.

Instagram therapists

I have a childhood friend who experienced the death of a partner at a very young age, and she’s sort of become this grief influencer online. She’s talking about her experience of grief and how to live with grief, and I’m almost embarrassed to say it, because obviously the death of a partner is very different than getting dumped, but I also learned so much from her page and what she was saying. I will say that I also had real therapists, so it wasn’t solely relying on Instagram therapists. I think you also have to have real people that you’re talking to. But while you’re going through something like that, you’re obsessed with finding other people who are also going through something like that, finding validation or some meaning to what’s happening.

There’s lots of obviously very bad Instagram therapists, but there’s also some pretty good ones that are making memes about breakups and stuff. I have an album on my phone of hundreds of these memes from Instagram therapists. I haven’t looked at it for a long time, but it was so helpful to make sense of what I was experiencing. At the same time, as with any therapy, I think there’s the risk of eliminating that self-awareness. It’s really important to always be aware of your role in everything and the control that you have – try to focus more on yourself and what you can do in the immediate and long-term future.

One thing that’s different is that an actual therapist sees you change and go through these stages, whereas the algorithm doesn’t, so it might keep feeding you, like, attachment style videos.

Oh, for sure. I didn’t even know what attachment theory was until this breakdown – the concept of being avoidant or any of these things, and then I became so invested in it. When it’s distilled into an Instagram meme, it’s very easy to be like, “Oh, I’m an avoidant,” and exist in these very clear compartments, which obviously isn’t reality whatsoever. That’s why you also need the real therapist to negotiate that. But at the same time, it was helpful because when you go through an extreme heartbreak, it can feel really isolating. It kind of does feel like you’re the only person in the world who can or has ever felt like this, and I personally found it really helpful to, first of all, be able to talk about it openly with friends, but also to be able to read about and connect with people who had also gone through something similar. It’s almost like a dopamine hit when you’re hearing other people’s breakup stories.

Madonna’s Ray of Light 

What made you and your co-producer, Kieran Adams, return to that landmark album? 

To be totally honest, that influence arrived quite late in the process. Actually, it was my new partner, Axel, who played it for me after not hearing it for a long time. It was like, “Oh, you should make your album sound like this,” and I was like, “Yeah, you’re right.” [laughs] But it was in the last 10% of the process, where we were using it as this North Star to make all those sort of last-minute decisions. If there was a drum sound that we couldn’t quite figure out, we were like, “What would they use on this record?” We’d use that as a blueprint to just make these final production decisions. But to me, that reference is sort of from a larger category of this Eurodance pop music that I was listening to a lot in the pandemic and influenced this record a lot. There’s a lot of artists right now releasing records who have the same influence, and in some ways, I’m like: it’s the zeitgeist, it’s been 20-something years, the cycle always continues of what becomes trendy or popular again.

But I think there’s another part to it where, at least in my experience, in the first couple years of the pandemic – in Toronto, apparently we had the most lockdown days of any other city in the world, for whatever reason. Specifically in the winter, because it’s too cold to go outside, there were a few years in a row where we had lockdown winters where you didn’t see anyone. I was dating somebody new at that time who was from France, and they grew up with a lot of this Eurodance stuff. I knew some of it, but a lot of it never made its way over to Canada, so a lot of it I was hearing for the first time. We would just get together on the weekends and blast Eurodance in my apartment. It was such a contrast to the sort of depressing months of the pandemic, playing these really euphoric songs and dance around the apartment.

When it became very clear that I was inevitably going to be making a breakup record, there was no escape from that, I didn’t want it to be a depressing breakup record. I really was inspired by that feeling of euphoria, and I really wanted to be able to bring that into the record. I wanted to have this euphoric, emotional release rather than dwelling in this low-grade depression.

Greek mythology and Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound

I’m curious how that essay personally affected you, and whether it reframed the use of your voice as an emotional tool during the process of the album.

I read the Anne Carson essay after I made the album, so it’s kind of cheating that I put that in there. But that essay was really powerful for me to read, because I have had direct experience from being a person who makes music in this music industry for over 20 years, depending on how you want to categorize it. I would say the biggest selling point for me, for my music, has always been my voice; I think it’s always been the most contentious part of my music as well. I’ve received direct feedback people would say that my voice is too divisive for radio. I find it so interesting, because I’m a good singer.  [laughs] That’s something I can say with a lot of confidence, and I know that that’s why people are drawn to my music as well, so I was always so confused when I would receive feedback like that. I always knew there was some element of misogyny in it, but reading this Anne Carson book, which is totally devoted to thousands of years of how a patriarchal society responds to a woman’s voice, I was like, “I feel so connected to this.”

Anne Carson is also one of the foremost scholars of Greek mythology. I was familiar with some of her other work, like The Autobiography of Red. On this album, I have a song called ‘Siren Song’, which is interesting, because a siren is a singer. A siren is essentially these merpeople that, in Greek mythology, would sing and lure sailors into their grasp, they would trap them. The antidote to that was Orpheus, who would come and he would play his lyre, and he would overpower the sirens, and the sailors would be drawn to the lyre instead of the sirens, and they would be saved. Originally, I had written this song where I was using that as a metaphor for my experience: I’m the siren, I’m singing, I’m trying to lure my ex back, but unfortunately, she’s completely enamored by Orpheus, this other person and the lyre.

I had already flipped the narrative where the siren is the protagonist who we want to succeed, we want her to win. And that story, reading it in the context of Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound made so much sense to me. We look at the sirens who have been vilified for centuries, and her whole book is essentially dissecting the way that we perceive women’s voices throughout history. It’s really quite shocking to read the book, because we’re talking about thousands of years, and there’s tons of references: Ernest Hemingway, who says he has to stop being friends with Gertrude Stein because he can’t stand her voice. It’s so prominent in history that men are repulsed by women’s voices. I haven’t felt so connected to a piece of writing in so long. I’ve only read it once; I feel like I need to read it four more times, and I’ll probably end up doing something else with that writing. I was like, “Maybe this could be the beginning of a new thing.” But to me, it was the theoretical explanation of ‘Siren Song’, which I had already written. It’s really nice when something makes sense to you much later after the fact.

‘HAHA’ by Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul

It’s interesting tying this one conceptually to The Gender of Sound, in terms of what it means to hear the laughter in the song. But it’s also echoed in your song ‘Think Twice’.

I’m glad that you picked up that it was a direct reference for ‘Think Twice’, because that’s exactly what it is. [laughs] I actually became drawn to that song while I was working on the score for this documentary called Swan Song. I worked really closely with the producer and the director to not only score it, but also had a lot of control over all the music that was in the doc. That song had a moment in the score, but I think we couldn’t clear it, so I had to try and make something that had a similar energy. I ended up using some of the dialogue from the documentary itself and chopping it up and creating that sort of energy, but I was still so influenced by that track.

‘Think Twice’ was one of the last songs I actually made for the record, and it was at a point where I’d already experienced a lot of healing. I was at a point where I was witnessing my experience from an outside perspective and really leaning into this humorous side of it. When I was writing ‘Think Twice’, I was trying to create something that was kind of silly and fun. That track represents all these things to me, so I leaned into it. I was really worried that ‘Think Twice’ would come across as too mean, but it sounds like everyone who’s heard it sees it as this humorous thing, which I’m happy about.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

Every once in a while, you come across a book, and you’re like, “It feels like this book was just made for me.” It’s a story about a character who can transform their gender anytime they want, and they’re moving through this world: woman, man, sometimes in between. It’s one of those fantasy novels that’s very rooted in reality. We’re not in space, we’re not in a fantasy land. We’re in the ‘90s in the Northeastern United States, but there’s this fantasy element. And as someone who’s always been a huge sci-fi fan, I just found that story to be magical. And the reason why I put it in there is because while I was making this album, it took so long – I wasn’t making the album consistently, there were many years where I was aimless, and I didn’t know what I was doing. And I actually got pretty into writing during this time period, which I never have before. I found myself writing almost every day, which was probably kind of a coping mechanism. I would just be dishing out these words and very bad poems, but it was just an emotional release about how I was feeling.

But I did recognize that writing had become something that was more important to me, and I wanted to get better at it, so I was reading books on poetry and learning the very basics of poetry. I ended up signing up for a workshop with Andrea Lawlor in Provincetown at the Fine Arts Work Center. It was just a 5-day writing workshop. I just went by myself to take this course, but it was such a funny thing for me to do, because everybody in the workshop was a serious writer. They were either published, some of them were journalists who wanted to get into fiction, some of them were about to be published. They were people that had committed to writing – that was their thing for their whole lives. I went in there, and we would get these writing props, and I had to Google what the third person and first person were. I couldn’t remember because I haven’t been in school since high school. I felt deeply out of place, out of my depth. It was quite embarrassing to be there. But at the same time, when I look back on it, I’m very proud of myself for doing that. And of course, I did meet a lot of really interesting, cool people that I’ve kept in touch with, and there was no judgment. Nobody cared that I wasn’t a writer.

In mentioning Andrea Lawlor, I think it’s more that that book drew me to that particular space and workshop, and I would say that it influenced the album just in that I’ve never experienced that as a musician. I feel like there isn’t much of a network of workshops for songwriting in the same way as there are for fiction. I understood the framework of how people practice writing and get better at writing, and I was able to apply that to music making. You create these constrictions for yourself, like writing props, and you have to work within them in a period of time. I ended up taking that concept and using it for my own music. I really feel like as a creative person, it’s incredibly valuable to enter other art forms that may not be yours, just to see how they do things.

Do you feel like being in that environment made you feel less self-conscious about sharing different kinds of writing, even lyrics? 

I was actually very proud of myself, because on the last day, you’re supposed to share some writing, and I did end up writing something. It wasn’t any of the prompts that we had done in the class, I just sort of wrote it on my own. I read it, and it was actually related to music. I had to get up on stage in front of a room of writers who were all in these writing workshops and read this paragraph I had written, and they were all so supportive. I think it was helpful to have more confidence in my lyric writing, because that’s an area that, when I started my career, I just didn’t care about. It was totally irrelevant to me, and as my career has progressed, I’ve gotten more and more interested in it. It’s always been something that has never come as naturally to me as writing music, so I think I’ve always had a lack of confidence in that department. But this workshop was just one step that helped me feel like the writing is something that not only I could do, but also you can learn. You can get better at it.

Singing Lessons with Fides Krucker

I’m curious how that compares to taking lessons in an area where you are more confident.

Fides Krucker is an ex-opera singer who has kind of created a whole methodology around singing based around yawning. I had been having some issues with my singing voice, which was scary to me, because I’d never really had to do anything – I’d never really had to try, I never really warmed up, I just would sing, and it would be great. [laughs] I had started to notice that my voice had become weaker, and I wasn’t sure if that was because I was getting older, or if it was because I wasn’t performing or singing regularly because of the pandemic. I went to a voice therapist; for a long time, I thought I had acid reflux, and then it wasn’t that. I went to this one voice therapist who had me singing in a straw to practice breath control, and I was like, “This is so boring.” So then a friend actually recommended I see this teacher, Fides, who runs these group classes, and actually, most of the people in her classes are not even singers. Most of them are actors, people who just need their voice.

Basically, the whole class is learning to yawn. Every day, we spend the first 15 minutes just yawning. We’re all sitting in a circle, yawning. I think she references a monkey, because you are basically trying to completely relax your body and fill your entire body up with oxygen through yawning. By the end of it, we’re all crying, your nose is running, your sinuses are cleared – it’s this amazing physical response. After you’ve done this yawning session, at least in my case, it’s like my voice is renewed. I can hit the high notes, I can hit the low notes, the control is back, it’s there. And I guess her theory is that – and as someone who was really into opera in high school, I’ve always known this reference: they say that the purest voice is a baby crying. You just have this full-body wail, and you’re always trying to access that level of openness. For the most part, throughout our lives, we really constrict the type of sounds we make.

Now that I’m saying this, this also relates very clearly to Anne Carson’s Gender of Sound, because that whole book is talking about how, throughout history, we perceive the male voice as controlled, repressed, able to manage its emotions, whereas the female voice is out of control. In these classes, you’re trying to access that lack of control, so you’re trying to just free everything up and make these guttural, bottom-of-the-belly wails. When you’re starting, you’re not trying to sound pretty, you’re just wailing. But it just accessed this voice for me that I haven’t heard in such a long time. Honestly, it was magic. I’d taken singing lessons before, and it’s supposed to take years to get to this certain level, but one class of yawning and my voice is at a level that I haven’t been able to get to in so long. I’m always recommending her to people, because she does classes online too.

The X-Files

You’ve mentioned The X-Files in talking about ‘Siren Song’, specifically how you were inspired by Mulder’s desperate search for his sister. Tell me more about that connection. 

I just happened to be on an X-Files binge while I was making it; I rewatched the entire series. I’ve always been really drawn to sci-fi. This video I just made in Hawaii, we filmed it on top of this mountain called Mauna Kea, and it’s for the song ‘Fallen Cloud’. The reason why I went there is you’re above the clouds, so it feels like you’re in the sky when you’re shooting there. There’s this whole series of these really big satellites and telescopes all over the top of this mountain; you have the NASA one, you have the Japanese one, and then you have the Canadian-French one. The location feels like you’re in The X-Files. It felt so right to be there.

The direct influence in lyric writing, as you said, was in ‘Siren Song’. I think when you’re talking about something personal – for me, the loss of a relationship – it’s really hard to say what you want to say. It’s hard to access that level of vulnerability. But if you can put those feelings on something else – in my case, I was really moved by Mulder’s connection to his sister. There’s something very feminine about Mulder; he’s very in touch with his emotions, and he doesn’t have these extremely “I’m a hero” masculine qualities that you would have in other TV shows. This devotion to finding his sister – and I love also that it’s his sister and not a lover,  it’s this childhood yearning that he has – I just found that so beautiful. When I was writing ‘Siren Song’, obviously I had my own yearning, but I was like, “What if I pretend I’m Mulder, and I write about his yearning?” It makes it easier to express those feelings when you’re not quite writing about yourself. I was able to get into his story as a way to tell my own.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Austra’s Chin Up Buttercup is out now via Domino.