{"id":3778,"date":"2012-02-24T10:24:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T16:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=3778"},"modified":"2012-02-24T10:24:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T16:24:42","slug":"rae-spoon-keeping-no-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/02\/24\/rae-spoon-keeping-no-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Rae Spoon – Keeping no secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

\nby Victoria King<\/strong><\/p>\n

I Can\u2019t Keep All of Our Secrets\u00a0is the most recent release from Rae Spoon, and the most electronic album of his discography to date. Before my stupid computer crapped out in the middle of our interview (unbeknownst to me), he was kind enough to chat about the new album, Nirvana, and gendered pronouns.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stylus: Was it a “conscious” effort to diverge from folk-pop to a more electronic sound?
\nRae Spoon:<\/strong> I guess so. It\u2019s like any process, like playing country music or bluegrass. It\u2019s been over the last three albums that I\u2019ve moved out of that. My last two or three albums have been consistently more pop-ish. I wanted to make an electronic album, that\u2019s where I was heading, but it just took me a while to get there.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Is there any place you find yourself writing best?
\nRS: <\/strong>Ummm, not really. I\u2019ve been on tour a lot for the last ten years, so if I need to write I can do it pretty much anywhere. Even when I\u2019m travelling or on the train, I can write stuff on my computer which is really convenient.<\/p>\n

Stylus: With writing more songs on the computer (as opposed to with a guitar in hand), has those means by which you facilitate your writing changed the content?
\nRS: <\/strong>Mmmm, not really. I try to make my content appropriate to the genre. I have to watch how country my electronic songs are (jokes) otherwise it doesn\u2019t make much sense. But there are different places where I wrote things. I wrote most of that last one in Montreal, and then in Germany, and you can kind of hear that. It just sounds more like Montreal and Germany. I guess for the country album I was in, like, Vancouver or Alberta and I think you can probably hear that influence.<\/p>\n

Stylus: In one video-blog post, you mention that Lisa Loeb\u2019s \u201cStay\u201d came out the year you first started songwriting. Growing up, who were artists that you really spoke out to you and inspired you?
\nRS: <\/strong>I definitely listened to more Christian contemporary music, and then Nirvana cut through that. I mean, even if you were in a pretty religious home it was enough to get through to you. So it was like Jesus, then Nirvana. So it was sort of like a Nirvana video. And then later on in high school, I got really into folk like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Christian contemporary?
\nRS: <\/strong>Yeah, like, people who are \u201cborn again Christians\u201d tend to only listen to that kind of music, and only let their kids listen to that kind of music. So I was in a house like that where it was like, \u201cYay, Amy Grant!\u201d [Laughs]<\/em> So Nirvana pulled me out of there . . . But there are Christian trans-people.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Absolutely. Oh! Sorry, real quick – what was your favorite Nirvana song?
\nRS: <\/strong>I think I really liked \u201cAbout a Girl\u201d<\/a> because that was like the first song I learned to play it off of tabs. I actually still really like a lot of their songs.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Forgive my ignorance with the Christian-trans question . . . But on that note, do you find that people tiptoe around you because they\u2019re not sure what they can\/can\u2019t say, or do they ignore that altogether?
\nRS: <\/strong>No, not really. I mean, I think people generally really wanna make other people comfortable. I mess up people\u2019s pronouns sometimes. I think that there\u2019s this constant element of people pointing out to me that I\u2019m trans, just by their \u201cnot being able to see it.\u201d [Laughs]<\/em> They\u2019ll be like, \u201cShe, he, they,\u201d you know? I think people are genuinely trying, which is all you can really ask. I\u2019ve played in a lot of smaller places, and for some of those people I\u2019m the only trans-person they\u2019d ever met. I\u2019m very understanding of that. I don\u2019t hear people saying a lot of malicious things anymore.<\/p>\n

Stylus: So for anyone that\u2019s working out concepts of their own gender, what advice would you give?
\nRS: <\/strong>I guess just that if you want someone to use a certain pronoun, for example, it\u2019s not my job to convince people of my gender. \u00a0Anything you do it has to be for yourself. Because no matter what you do, maybe other people wouldn\u2019t do that . . . and it\u2019s not on you to convince people that you\u2019re this gender. People should actually just respect other people. And that\u2019s a shitty thing and it\u2019s taking a long time to change. I think knowing that in yourself makes it a lot easier to deal with. You can\u2019t control the outside, and it\u2019s a basic right to be called by whatever pronoun you want . . . Even for me, if I\u2019m on tour and I don\u2019t see many queer people or trans people for a couple weeks I start feeling a little weird [laughs]<\/em>. You\u2019re like, \u201cAm I the only one?\u201d You need a community.<\/p>\n

You can check out Rae Spoon this Friday, February 24th at Gio\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victoria King I Can\u2019t Keep All of Our Secrets\u00a0is the most recent release from Rae Spoon, and the most electronic album of his discography to date. Before my stupid computer crapped out in the middle of our interview (unbeknownst to me), he was kind enough to chat about the new album, Nirvana, and gendered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[770,776,1032],"class_list":["post-3778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-queer","tag-rae-spoon","tag-trans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}