Artist to know: Katie McBride

a Q&A with the psychedelic alt-pop artist about her boppy new album

The slinky synths, beeps, blips, and zaps of Katie McBride will catch your ear right away. Then her silky-smooth vocals will reel you in further. Ever since her 2018 singles “NBSL” and “Baby Blue,” I’ve been captivated by the Toronto-based artist’s boppy sound — reminding me of Sylvan Esso, Phantogram, and Purity Ring, and even the emerging hyper-pop genre, but still maintaining something singular.

Last week, McBride released her best album yet, THE ANGELS ARE CALLING. I chatted with her about evolving as an artist, her inspirations, and her approach to self-production. Check out our conversation below.

I've been a fan of your music for a while — how would you describe the evolution of your sound and production style from those earlier singles ("NBSL" and "Baby Blue") through now? 

Thank you for being a fan of my music! It means a lot.

I think the evolution has been me coming into my own, both as a person and as a musician, which making art has both contributed to and benefitted from. It has all felt very cyclical. I’ve grown a lot more confident, especially with my abilities as a producer, so that allows me to take more risks and be more experimental, which is truer to my nature. This music is definitely bolder and more intimate — there are less layers and less reverb, for example. But none of that was really planned. Making music has always been a very curiosity-driven and fun thing for me, and more than ever I love that Brian Eno quote about “composers as gardeners” — I’m just planting seeds, giving them water, tending to them, and watching them grow. 

If you had to showcase one "gateway" song from the new album for a new listener to hear, which one would you play and why? 

That’s a tricky question and I’m stuck between “MOUSE” and “Maybe I Could See,” which could be why I put them first and second on the album. So I’m going to cheat and say those two, because I think together they represent opposite ends of the spectrum that the album exists on, both in terms of mood and production. All the songs on the album were created over the span of about two years, with “Maybe I Could See” at the beginning, and “MOUSE” at the end, so perhaps there’s some significance there. They are also just two of my favorites — I often get tired of hearing songs I’ve made, but these two have stood the test of time for me.

I know genres can be tricky to define, but I'm curious: How would you describe the sound (and general vibe) of your new album?

I often say “electronic”, maybe throw in a little “alt pop,” “ambient,” “experimental.” I’m always shifting my answer around this, and lately have been enjoying throwing in “psychedelic.” I like these words because they give you an idea of what the music sounds like, but are open-ended enough to leave room for the imagination, and for change. Lately I like “psychedelic” because it makes me think of an inward, existential journey, which has always been what it’s felt like to make music for me. 

You've released some experimental/ambient tracks and albums alongside your poppier music, but the singles for the new record definitely feel consistently boppier, dancier, and melodic — some feel linked to the "hyper-pop" genre that's been emerging recently. How do you balance the shift between creating poppier songs and more ambient music? Do you prefer one to the other?

I ebb and flow pretty naturally between them, I find they act as a nice compliment to each other. When I work on more ambient/experimental music it’s a more meditative process, and when I work on the more structured, vocal/drum-based music I find it more energizing. In that realm, I often get sort of a natural high. Although, the longer I make music, the more that these two worlds seem to merge together, so I’m curious where it will go in the future. 

Who do you view as some of your biggest musical inspirations ever? How about for this album specifically?

Some of my biggest inspirations ever are Miles Davis, Animal Collective, Björk, William Basinski, Philip Glass, Erik Satie, Susumu Yokota, The Durutti Column, Four Tet, Nina Simone, Aphex Twin, GAS, and Laurie Spiegel. There weren’t really any artists in particular that I was drawing inspiration from for this album though, at least not that I can think of... I was just absorbing/exploring the world and letting it find its way into the music. I wrote this album while moving around a lot too — I probably worked on it in about 10 or 15 different spaces, all around Toronto and Los Angeles, so the changing landscape was definitely a source of inspiration too.

You wrote that you started releasing your 2022 album "one song at a time," and that "at times the record was being created as it was being released." For this new record, did you take a similar real-time // song-by-song approach, or did your process change this time? 

In general, yes! I started releasing it about a year ago with about half of the songs already finished, and then added some new ones as I went. “MOUSE,” “HIDEAWAY,” “In My Old Town,” “BYZANTIUM.” and “fugue” were all made after I started releasing the record, so within the past year. I had a pretty good idea but didn’t finalize what would be on it until about a month ago, when I was putting it together, and there were songs I wanted to put on it but that just didn’t fit. I really like this approach as it feels very raw and documents the music’s evolution over a period of time. It’s also interesting because I'll just put out songs as I make them, or feel the urge to release them, and then at some point decide to put them together and see what other songs go with them. So the decisions around what the album will ultimately look like end up being very drawn out. I think my next record will be the first “conceptual” one, where I work on it all at once, to see what that’s like. But this approach feels very natural for me. 

In general, how have you ultimately approached compiling the structure of the album? Do you feel like it has a cohesive theme — whether that's lyrically, in the musical vibe // production approach, or all of the above? 

I really found the concept of angels to be a recurring one. The title of the record is a reference to a line in Patti Smith’s book Just Kids, where she says “the angels were calling,” about her future as an artist. I love the concept of angels in general — I didn’t really grow up with religion, so perhaps I can enjoy some of these ideas at a safer distance — and I think of angels as symbols of transcendence. I like how they’re often depicted in human form, but one that is beyond life and death. So I say angel a couple of times in the lyrics, and even there are some heavenly-sounding choral samples and organs. I think I tapped into this a lot on this record because this period of my life has really felt like a blossoming. I got sober in 2019 so this is the first record I’ve made where the buds of sobriety really felt like they were blooming for me. Tapping into something bigger than myself, facing my own mortality, being humbled, finding the flow in reality, feeling gratitude and love but also deep grief, fear, anger, sadness — everything bubbling, coming to the surface, rising, blooming, flying, dying, and starting over again, but ultimately, transcending. Which is totally how I approached the structure of the record actually. I wanted it to be a journey, like a life cycle, one whose end could just as easily be its beginning.