New waves in Another Sky’s ‘Beach Day’
A PLACE FOR FEMININE RAGE TO LIE IT’S HEAD IN THE SUN.
Packing a full-bodied, truthful and simultaneously gentling sound, Another Sky’s Catrin has the kind of voice that makes you stop what you’re doing and consider your own mortality. After setting themselves into orbit as one’s to watch in the UK music scene, Another Sky’s latest album Beach Day carries a Florence and the Machine-esque enormity– the type of sound to bring the ocean into the room with you and shake your bones out to.
Exploring themes of growth and potent anger, Another Sky’s sophomore LP pours out of the cracks of a society that feels unsteadied by feminine rage. With unashamed fluidity, Beach Day waltzes between rock and anthemic might to speak alive the parts of humanity that hide in order to be palatable. Breaking down conventions of sound, lyrical approachability and femme expression, Another Sky uncovers a modern battle between wanting to be loved and wanting to be whole.
I feel like it would be very dark where you are currently.
It’s because I’m in the crypt, so it’s just stonewall.
How would you describe the place where you grew up?
Oh, I love that question. Just quickly, is my Internet connection okay?
I can hear you perfectly.
Thank God, because that’s a really great question. How would you describe where you grew up? Have you ever heard of Ben Howard’s Every Kingdom?
I haven’t, but it’s on my list now.
It’s an amazing album. A British artist. I think it’s over ten years old now, and it just sounds like the countryside where I grew up. Very green, kind of beautiful. With our first album, I was very annoyed at my hometown, and I was very mean about my hometown because I never felt like me or my family fit in there. But I’ve made peace with my hometown now, and it’s very beautiful in comparison to a city like London.
What was that drop for you where you were like, okay, now I’m at peace with where I’ve come from. What changed?
It’s another good question. Just getting older, you have to make peace with things. You can choose to stay in bitterness, or you can choose to accept the life that you’ve had. And I think with my hometown, I love going back there now, and I don’t see it’s completely changed. It’s like a new generation of people, and it can be a new place for me.
I love that. What did you listen to when you were growing up? What was the soundtrack to your formative years?
Oh, so much. Ben Howard’s Every Kingdom. That was just as I was leaving, I had that on repeat. All of Imogen Heap’s stuff. I was really into this band called Fightstar. It was Charlie from Busted’s project. Yeah, they were way heavier than Busted. That was my soundtrack.
When did you have that realization that you wanted to share your voice with people?
I think for me, being able to sing was the only way I ever got heard. I think whenever I could get up in front of an audience, it was built in that everyone just had to listen to you, whereas in other areas of my life, I couldn’t kind of be heard, and that was a way to be heard. And it’s interesting, I pushed myself through it as I was always really anxious, shaking so much before I performed. I had really bad performance anxiety. I think it was a way to be heard more than anything.
In the initial stages, did you feel like you were being heard by a receptive crowd, or did you have to get out of where you were locationally to feel that?
Because I had quite a strange voice, and I was doing my own songs – I wasn’t covering other people’s songs– it was kind of strange for a nine year old or a teenager. I remember half the audience just never got it, and then the people that got it really got it. I remember it being that way since I was a kid, and that’s really translated into the band as well. It’s like if you get it, you get it and you’re in. And I think it’s the emotional aspect. It’s pure emotion.
I did have to battle through criticism because I think a lot of people just didn't get it. It's quite a strange voice, and a lot of people just didn't understand it.
And that made me more incentivized to carry on performing. I remember wanting to fight through it.
When you are so aware of how different you are to what people are used to hearing, and you were even kind of talking about that dissonance you felt with your hometown, I wonder, how would you describe yourself to someone that’s never met you before? How do you see yourself now?
These are really good questions, I have to say. It’s 08:00 a.m.
Take your time.
How would I describe myself? Fluid. I think part of being human is accepting that you do change constantly. So I’m always a different person by the time I’ve met a new person, so fluid, open to change.
Strange, but you're going to love it.
I might steal that for my own self description at some point.
Strange, but you’re going to love it (laughs).
I feel like this whole upcoming album has a lot to do with anger and the messiness of human experience and human condition. The two tracks where I really felt that on a visceral level was Psychopath and then again differently on Playground. How did you access those parts of yourself in recording? Did you have a process of getting into that emotional space? And where do those feelings live now?
I think with Psychopath, I had to go there because the band had written that song. And I remember instead of recording into this beautiful microphone as we had for the other songs, I think I just used a normal gig microphone. And we pretended I was at a gig. And I’ve always found accessing emotion really easy. I was talking to Jack yesterday and we were talking about how usually people have these kind of emotional fronts, but I think for some reason, with me it’s different.
I feel my way through the world. So the process of making music, the barriers are just always down. I don't have to kind of prepare. It's just whatever is in the moment comes out.
And you’re right. Psychopath and Playground, they are these huge anthemic tracks– well, Playground is anthemic Psychopath is more rock. And I think it helped that our studio is in the crypt of a church, and it was lock down and we weren’t gigging. It felt like this little cocoon and I didn’t have to worry about being watched, so I could just be as honest as I needed to be. And I think by the time the album gets to Playground, that is just total honesty with myself. Like, I’ve let this happen because I’m this kind of open feeling person who moves through the world just letting these things happen to me.
Your relationship with anger after your first album and now this body of work, has it changed? Have you felt yourself more open to those kinds of “negative” feelings, if you will? I mean, you described yourself as fluid, so maybe you have a higher comfortability than the average person?
Yeah, it was new, uncharted territory. And I remember while we were making it, I was all for it. I was so in the anger. And I think that’s the amazing thing about music, that you can express any emotion, and then whatever happens to the songs or what happens to them afterwards is kind of out of your control. You’re more of this emotional conduit for whatever’s going on inside. There’s the making of music, and then there’s the reaction to music, and you can’t control the reaction.
Even now, I feel like I'm not allowed anger. I've woken up today and I've realized, oh, I'm angry again, and there's nowhere for it to go.
Because I think people really cannot handle angry women. It is not okay for women to be angry. And I feel that in myself. I even feel it in how I treat other women. We just have this real block with anger in women when to be a whole human being, you need every emotion. And we cut off things in men as well. We cut off sadness in men a lot.
I’ve been angry on this album, I’ve been through that process and still I’ve woken up today and gone, I’m angry and I’ve been making everything okay again, and I’m not okay. I’ve just been making everything okay for people around me, but I’m not okay. And it’s amazing that you can go through that process with a whole album. And because everything happens in cycles, you’re back to the beginning, but with a new understanding. So it’s okay. I’ve realized quicker that I’m angry.
Can I ask you, what makes you angry?
It’s been really hard these past four years. I don’t know how it is in Australia at the minute, but in the UK, it’s really heading south really quickly. It’s just not going well. And artists, I’d group us in with anyone in the public sector, like working for charities or working in healthcare. And I’d group artists in with the first people to struggle when societies aren’t kind of going very well. And I was thinking about it this morning, we’re kind of the canaries in the mine. You’re saying, this is getting really bad, and you kind of end up screaming into a void.
And the amazing thing about artists is your voice is built into what you do. Like, the whole point of being an artist is to be able to say and point at things and go, why is the world like that? Why is that happening? That’s not okay. Why is that happening?
And it’s angering, but it’s hard to be in that anger all the time. I used to be in it all the time but when I was in that anger all the time, nothing got done.
You need the anger, and then you need the understanding and the empathy. You need it all.
And what makes me angry I guess I’m trying to say in a really long, roundabout way is the world we’re not solving.
This is a really tricky time, and I’m just seeing a lot of people I love suffer. What do you do? There has to be some kind of action when you’re angry to dispel the anger. And I guess it’s standing up for yourself and saying, this can’t continue or this can’t carry on.
What is one hope for the world that you have despite the anger?
I guess my one hope is that we can find some sort of meaning from it all and figure out a way forward. That’s my hope.
