This Is The Kit - Playing with words

Over Zoom I meet Kate Stables, aka This Is The Kit, to talk about her excellent new work "Careful Of Your Keepers". There were two weeks left before the album's release, and Kate seemed unable to wait to share her new collection of songs with the world. The interview soon turned into an enjoyable exchange of ideas and impressions, becoming for Kate a moment of self-reflection and meta-reflection. The new songs allowed us to keep widening the scope of the conversation, and in the interview that follows you'll find not only details about her most recent projects, but also a glimpse into her creative workshop.

Hi Kate, how are you? Congratulations on your new album! I really loved it and keep listening to it over and over.

It's nice to be able to release an album in a different way from the previous one, which, inevitably, lived through a kind of confinement. I'm also really excited about being able to play in record shops again and to be around people. One of the best parts of my job is exactly that human interaction. Plus, I really love playing songs live until I master every aspect of them.

Will you also be playing again in bookshops or libraries?

I hope so! I love both bookshops and libraries, and I've already played in both kinds of places. It's interesting to use public spaces like libraries in new ways.

"Careful Of Your Keepers" seems to me connected in several ways to your previous album, "Off Off On": they feel like relatives in terms of sound. Yet you worked with two different producers. What were the main differences during the recording sessions of the two albums?

Yes, I think you're right, they're like cousins. The main differences I noticed were in the energy in the room and in the communication. Both Josh (Kaufman) and Gruff (Rhys) are very attentive and diplomatic communicators, though, and both have a lot of tact. They were both very respectful and positive. I think that matters a lot for anyone producing music. You know, it's hard to compare them, because there's so much more to their personalities than what I experienced in just two recording sessions. During the recording process, Gruff left a lot of space for all of us and our ideas, and then got more involved in creative decisions during mixing. Josh, on the other hand, was very hands-on in the creative process during recording, and maybe a little less so during mixing. But I'm really oversimplifying things here.

In some interviews for "Off Off On" you talked about how some lyrics written before the pandemic ended up sounding prophetic, since the record came out in autumn 2020. Did the experience of the pandemic directly inspire you this time?

Not consciously. It wasn't a period that stimulated me much in terms of composing music. If anything, it made me think I should have gone to work for some charity organisation and been useful to the community in a concrete, immediate way. But in the end I didn't do that, and I kept making music instead. Anyway, as I said, it wasn't a period that directly inspired me, but it's part of my lived experience, and one way or another it might show up in my songs even unconsciously.

Listening to your new record, I picked up on a sense of mystery, a kind of ineffable presence. Does an arcane, magical world feed your songwriting?

Yes, I think so. But it's a mix between mystery and a desire to leave the songs open to whoever is listening to interpret them. I don't want to impose how my music should be interpreted. I try to be honest and to write the way I want to write. I'm not a linear storyteller. I prefer creating a kind of collage. Besides, words are like people's lives: they make decisions and sometimes choose their own direction.

What you're saying is really interesting, because your songwriting is decidedly abstract, yet listening to your songs you can "see" a lot of images.

I experience them that way too. I actually see images when I write and sing the words of my lyrics, like watching a slideshow.

I've always pictured your records as a flow of words, ideas, images, emotions. It's interesting that the title track follows the existential questions that close "Scabby Head And Legs", as if it were itself a possible answer to those questions.

I think the title track works less as a "question" compared to the other songs. There are a lot of questions in the other tracks, and "Careful Of Your Keepers" is more like a song of observation, or a statement of intent about how to take care of yourself and other people.

How do you choose the running order of the tracks on a record?

Uh, good question. There are a lot of factors at play. I usually work from the edges inward. I think about how it should start and how it should end. The next step is deciding how to close side A and open side B, then I fill in the remaining gaps. Either way, it's a process that takes a lot of attempts and can be a pretty crazy experience. For "Off Off On" I'd found the perfect order, but then I realised there wasn't enough space on side A of the vinyl, and I had to change almost everything. For this record, though, I found the right sequence straight away, well before we even mixed it. I tried out alternatives, but I think this really is the right order. Then again, do people still listen to an album from start to finish, or just individual songs on Spotify? Either way, I think it's worth making the effort to create a kind of journey.

But what makes a song a good opening track or a fitting closer?

That's really a great question! I should start taking notes on my own answers. I think the first song should open up the field of vision, but at the same time focus on the journey you're about to take. Maybe it's a bit obvious to describe listening to an album as a journey, but it kind of is, isn't it? You travel through the songs. Anyway, I tend to avoid picking a strong, upbeat song for the start of the record. Though I should double check, maybe I'm wrong...

It seems to me that "Off Off On" actually opened with a particularly upbeat track...

Oh yeah, it starts with "Found Out". Well, I was wrong then! (laughs). Though I often put the exciting song in second place. Hmm, is that the case with "Careful Of Your Keepers"? Is "Inside Outside" the second track, right?

Yes!

Well, yeah, this one has more energy! (laughs) Okay, maybe I have a different approach every time. Anyway, I chose this album's first song partly because I almost called the album "Goodbye Bite". That was another potential title track. To me, "Goodbye Bite" is a song set after an event or a series of events, and it felt right to have it as a kind of prologue. It's the "after" song, while "Dibs" is the beginning. Oh, this is funny, I'm only realizing now what I did. I put the end of the story at the start of the album and the beginning of the story at the end. But somehow it all makes sense…

Yeah yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but listening to the record you can hear a kind of fracture between the first song and the second one, "Inside Outside".

Yeah, that's interesting, but I have the feeling I still haven't answered your question about how I choose the opening song…

No, that was a good answer, but how do you go about the closing song?

I choose the opening and closing songs also by imagining the record as a concert, and that I have to carry the listeners along with me. "Dibs" ended up with a lush arrangement because Jesse (Vernon, ed.) added a ton of stuff after the recording, and it became huge, imposing. Plus, "Dibs" has this sense of cosmic solidarity and hope: it was a good way to close the record.

Yes, that's true, there's a kind of climax building up to those final minutes.

Then there's also this drum part. I was thinking of a Jim O'Rourke song about dying, where at the end the drums go wild in this noisy experience. I had the feeling "Dibs" needed something similar. Working on this song was like solving a puzzle, a fun one though!

I find the song "More Change" really moving, both for the tenderness of the arrangement and for the images conjured up by your lyrics. Was there anything in particular that inspired you while writing it?

This song is partly about the way relationships change or don't change. I mean: is it the relationship that changes, or is it our perception of it that shifts? It's a bit like with "Inside Outside": is it us who change, or is it the outside world? Someone recently told me about a theory called the change paradox, according to which, instead of trying to change things, you just need to stay still and let change happen on its own. While this person was talking to me, I kept thinking that, deep down, the album is about similar phenomena. Also, I often come across quotes or ideas about change as the absence of change, and the absence of change as change. Anyway, the song "More Change" mainly focuses on how a relationship's change affects us, and on the fact that such change can be both frightening and reassuring.

You've kind of anticipated my next question. I actually wanted to ask whether you'd read the line "more change, more stays the same" in a more political way or a more personal, existential one.

Definitely both. Very often my songs incorporate both dimensions. I start writing a song that, in my head, is about some global situation, and then I realize I'm actually ending up writing about a personal experience of mine. But it also happens the other way round: I start writing about a personal experience of mine, and then I notice the song is actually about a political theme. Anyway, I think both aspects always coexist, since our individual lives are fragments of a bigger design, which is that of human existence.

It seems to me that you like repeating words or whole phrases in your lyrics, only to then slip in tiny, almost imperceptible variations.

Yes, it does seem that way! (laughs) I think it ties back to what we were saying about change arising from the absence of change. Like when you're a kid and you repeat words or phrases over and over until suddenly they lose their meaning and start to sound different. I like it when listeners get used to an idea, a phrase, and then notice the change in a word, in a nuance. I enjoy playing around and scrambling words, but I hope it's not too annoying to listen to.

You also like experimenting with the sound of words, though.

Yes, to me words are like clay. How they sound, and how you feel them in your ears, in your mouth, or, if you're singing them, in your own body, influences the choices I make in my lyrics. But, of course, meaning matters too.

Just like in poetry, then. But is the musical aspect of the lyrics connected to the song's arrangement?

I hope so! For me it's all connected, but it's hard to know exactly how people feel that connection.

In recent years you've collaborated with a lot of musicians, both men and women. What has it been like working with so many different people?

It's something I love. It's always stimulating, because you learn things about yourself and others, you discover the kind of music other people write and how they go about it. It's really valuable working with other people, not just for the human interaction, but also because you learn different ways of doing things.

I had the chance to see you play in Zurich on the tour supporting "Off Off On". The show was at Bogen F, the concert hall with the train tracks above the roof.

Ah, the one that makes those strange, funny noises when a train goes past. I remember it, it's a lovely place!

I remember you had a magnetic energy on stage. How do you approach the live dimension?

Well, maybe it helps having a railway line above you! That's all it was, a stroke of luck! Anyway, I'm not really sure what happens during shows; it feels to me like I'm having an interaction with the audience. I'm not someone capable of having a different personality on stage. You know, some people are very good at that kind of acting. I can't do it. That's why I just want to be myself. Sometimes it works better than others: it depends on the day, on the people in the room and, I suppose, on my mood too.

(11/06/2023)

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