A mix of whimsical urban- and rural-inspired tunes with unique lyrics, Forest City Lovers recently released their sophomore album, Carriage, and are currently touring Canada and the northeastern United States. The Charlatan’s Courtney White recently caught up with singer and lyricist Kat Burns to discuss musical growth, humour and trains of thought.
The Charlatan (TC): How does your new album differ from Haunting Moon Sinking?
Kat Burns (KB): From my point of view it was like a growth, like a conscious effort to make everything a little bit different, a little bit more filled out, and push the envelope a little bit for my own song writing. Musically it is like the next level but it is not crazy different. It ties over nicely I think from the other album.
TC: A lot of your song’s lyrics are sarcastic or good-humoured, like in “Tell me, Cancer.” Is this humour intentional?
KB: Some things are definitely tongue-in-cheek. It is essentially a small humorous revolt against the feeling of vulnerability.
TC: Some people think it is shocking that you “drop the F-bomb” in “Tell Me, Cancer.” Do you think it was a bold move?
KB: That’s funny! Yeah, it was bold, I guess. I mean in context it . . . does work with the song. I quite often do change it if there are kids in the room or something [but] it does change the meaning if you change it.
It took some convincing because I wrote it that way and then when we were recording I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if I should do this.”
I didn’t want it to prohibit anyone from listening to it and I was like, “what if CBC doesn’t play it,” which sometimes at the recording stage when you’re done you kind of think of stuff like that. I swear all the time in my daily vocabulary, unfortunately, so it was only a matter of time before it crept into any art form.
I’m trying to reduce my swearing.
TC: What would you say is your favourite part about the new album?
KB: Well, the process was really nice. It just was a lot more cohesive and everything was a lot more planned out this time, which was nice for me.
In the past it’s sort of been get-a-bunch-of-people-to-play-different-things, and maybe not know everything we’re doing before we go in. Things changed and were added and subtracted but we had much more of a goal [now] that we had talked about.
I had talked to our producer a lot about how I wanted it to sound and I think he is really good at getting that through. I think recording was really a good experience with this record.
I feel like I put a lot of thought into the track listing. I feel like it is sort of a moving unit, a moving train of thought, so I’m happy about that.
TC: What do you hope listeners will take away from this album?
KB: I always write similar themes: movement and solitude as well as interactions with people. It’s not a lonely or sad record I don’t think. The intention was to express emotionally and lyrically what I wanted to say but in a way that was musically satisfying.
You can bop your head as well as you can have a few moments in the record to chill out. If people come away with just wanting to listen to it again I think that would be successful for us.q