FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Kim Hiorthøy
Part Twenty-Six: Kelly Lee Owens
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FOR this instalment of Modern Heroines…
I am heading from New Zealand (where I focused on Lorde previously) to Wales, and to the door of the remarkable Kelly Lee Owens. She is one of my favourite artists of the moment, and I have loved her Inner Song – one of the best albums of last year. Not to discard her earlier work but, as Inner Song is her biggest album to date (her 2017 debut, Kelly Lee Owens, is terrific and well worth listening to), I am going to focus more on that. As usual with these features, I will introduce some interviews and a couple of reviews too. Rather than me share my thoughts regarding an artist and ramble a lot, I think that the information from interviews especially gives us more detailed and honest answers and background. Inner Song was included in many people’s best albums of 2020 and, as we are in a new year, I am interested to see where Owens goes next. She has not been able to tour Inner Song and do as much as she would have wished, so I hope that this year provides her with greater opportunity and exposure. I was interesting in learning more about the Electronic musician and producer. In an interview from The Guardian from May last year, we learn more about her move from London to Wales; we also discover more about some big themes that appear through Inner Song:
“When Owens moved from Wales to London in her 20s, she worked at Pure Groove records, where she met many DJs who encouraged her to pursue music. She had always been Team Indie, with a stint in the shoegaze band the History of Apple Pie, but the sessions for her former co-worker Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic album, on which she provided her hypnagogic vocals, turned her on to techno. Watching her friend in the studio with her future engineer, Ghost Culture, she says, “it seemed like they were crafting magic”.
Owens decided to craft magic of her own, ditched her band and started performing as a one-woman Berghain with synths and guitar. But as her popularity grew, her personal life started going south and she wasn’t enjoying her breakthrough success. “A relationship that I was in was quite destructive,” she says. “Me being me, I just powered through.” But then, “there were times when I was in bed, and I couldn’t move,” she admits. “I was trying to juggle lots of things to keep different people happy, and neglecting myself.” It’s a familiar story for women, putting others’ happiness ahead of our own. “We’re actually taught to do that, I think,” Owen agrees.
She recently dedicated a playlist of calming tracks to care workers, some of whom she is still in touch with from her hospital days, and who she is understandably concerned about. “The PPE [shortage] is absolutely huge,” says Owens. “I know a lot of doctors who are refusing to work, and I fully support them in that. The government is putting it as a war, so we have ‘heroes’, and actually all they’re doing is what they’d normally do with wars, which is to sacrifice people.”
Death crops up a little on Inner Song, including the destruction of the planet on the climate-crisis banger Melt!. But the album is also concerned with finding your way back to yourself. In a way, the making of it has been preparation for a scenario like the current moment: many of her lyrics suggest finding strength in solitude, atop kosmische soundscapes and 2-step beats. Owens’s voice is front and centre this time, instead of acting as another instrument, and we hear a lone male voice, too, on “psychedelic lullaby” Corner of My Sky: that of John Cale, whom she had asked to read a poem. It’s still rare to hear a lone male vocal on a piece of electronic music produced by a woman. “That’s quite bizarre, isn’t it,” ponders Owens, “but I think you’re right”.
I am interesting in sticking on the themes of Owens’ background and the themes she explores on Inner Song, as I love to see where artists came from and how they have developed. As Inner Song is such a beautiful and important album, it does require some deep consideration and exposure. Apologies if, like these features sometimes can do, there is a little bit of back and forth and a lack of rigid structure, but I have been scouring through interviews Owens conducted last year and some really fascinating information has come up. I want to bring in a few sections from an in-depth interview from NME, where we get a bit more of Kelly Lee Owens’ upbringing, and why trauma and death are areas that intrigue her:
“Kelly Lee Owens grew up, in her own words, as a typical “Virgo loner” in Flintshire on the north coast of Wales. She’d find comfort and joy in the musical world as opposed to “smoking on a wet pavement” with friends. In her bedroom, she’d play CDs and sing her own melodies atop, and came to master the bass, drums and more. Radiohead, The Cocteau Twins and New Order are key influences and she lauds their abilities to embrace melancholy but never abandon the rave.
Owens’ unflinching approach to empathy and inquisition has manifested itself in all parts of her career. At one point, she worked as an auxiliary nurse in a cancer ward, lending a helping hand to patients close to the end. She doesn’t consider death a taboo – she wants people to be educated in the complex emotions of mortality and grief in the same way that life is supported at birth. In the past year, more than 42,000 people are expected to have died from COVID-19 or associated illnesses.
“There’s trauma in knowing there’s a sense of isolation in death,” she says. “Something I’m interested in, and seems to come naturally, is supporting someone through the last moments of their lives. When my Nan died, she was being held and I was talking to her through this moment. A family friend recently passed and I recorded voice notes to play to him as he passed. There’s huge fear and stigma around death, but we need to think about this more in general to support people through these times so it’s less traumatic”.
The record explores our connection and behaviour towards the natural world and the accelerating climate crisis. Initial reports suggested that a reduction in air and car travel domestically and internationally had led to a substantial drop in carbon emissions, but it’s now considered that lockdown has had a negligible impact on halting global warming. During these isolated periods, green spaces have nurtured healing emotions for some, while others reconsider the value of outdoor space”.
I want to introduce one more interview before I move on and bring in some reviews for Inner Song but, as I look ahead and see which artists are going to make real impressions, Kelly Lee Owens is in my thoughts. I think that she will be an artist who we hear a lot more from; someone who will grow stronger and more incredible with each album – someone who will go on to influence a lot of other artists coming through.
Inner Song is a beautiful immerse and fascinating album that not only provides some phenomenal musical moments, but we also learn quite a lot and are made aware of some very big and important issues. Rather than the album being preachy and heavy-handed. When she spoke with FADER last year, Owens was asked about the themes on the record and, again, how nature and the natural world plays a crucial role:
“Why do you think it took you until now to get to that place of understanding what you need?
Because none of this stuff is taught in educational systems. There's no emotional education. You find that often from specific people in your life, good friends or people who come into your life, or mentors. I had to discover it for myself through books, other things. One of them was actually sound and healing. But, yeah, the support systems just aren't really there. I believe that that's for a reason — I feel when you're able to deal with your traumas in life, you can actually thrive, and I feel like this society, these systems, don't necessarily want you to thrive — they want you to stay in survival mode.
I think it's just something that has to, unfortunately, be self taught, because we've lost the art of storytelling. We've lost the art of community. And we've lost the art of interconnectedness with all things. There’s this individualism which, I think, has created a lot of loneliness and disconnection. And it's not about that. Let’s hope that we can now have more conversations, and there's more places that people feel like they can go to. People always need a place to be, and sometimes that place can be music.
A lot of the record focuses on nature in quite an interesting way. Why did you want to grab at the hugeness of it all? It seems to focus on how consequential the world is beyond the human perspective.
I think the bigger perspective has always helped me. The collective experience is always something that I've tried to tap into. I do feel interconnected to everything else, I don't believe in the separation of anything. I think [the separation of humanity and nature has] been the greatest trickery of our existence. Well, it’s classic divide and conquer, hey? ‘Let's go beyond each other, let's go as far as nature, let's disconnect [indigenous peoples] from themselves, which is also the land, and everything.’ I'm trying to dismantle that [idea], also, which I feel is important, and connect to the collective experience — understanding that what I do affects you, what you do affects me, and affects nature. I'm talking about [nature] as a separate entity, but I do feel we are it.
These concepts of reconnecting with nature and slowing down one’s life might be seen by some as New Age-y. What grounds these ideas for you?
I hate that label, I fucking hate that shit. [That label is] another tool. It's another tool to make people out to be mad or have their ideas invalidated or say that it's not real. It's such bullshit. This is what's sad to me: all of this stuff, that's so basic, has been mocked for a long time. Maybe that's one of the trickeries in itself: making someone out to be a hippie, giving things bad names and bad labels so that people rubbish it. That’s one form of trickery in itself. I am a grounded person. All I'm saying is, I want people to be able to deal, to thrive, to not be in survival mode. To feel a sense of community and home. And if that's New Age-y and hippie and mocked in a bad way, so be it. That shit's real. Sorry, I've gotten a bit on my high horse here. People are just so quick to mock stuff, but I look at someone's life, whether it's, you know, [someone] working nine-to-five in a job that they hate, who is completely disconnected from themselves and other people. Surely that's not it. We're understanding that fundamentally that doesn't work”.
I really love what Kelly Lee Owens is producing right now and, whilst I have brought in interviews where we learn more about her process and what goes into Inner Song, I have not sourced any reviews to show what critics made of it. I really love the album and I think it was one of 2020’s very best. The reviews for the album were amazingly positive, and one only needs to listen to Inner Song for a few minutes to understand why. Here is what Loud and Quiet wrote when they praised such an incredible record:
“In 2017, Kelly Lee Owens emerged with her self-titled debut, determined to prove that she was more than just a voice you heard on other artists’ albums. She more than succeeded, with tracks like ‘Bird’ and ‘Arthur’ demonstrating that she too could craft the kind of undulating rhythms and mesmeric techno that peers Daniel Avery and Ghost Culture were gaining recognition for.
Fast forward a few years, and it seems that this time around the battle has been proving something to herself. “I wasn’t sure if I could make anything anymore,” she’s admitted, “and it took quite a lot of courage to get to a point where I could create again.”
The result of that struggle is stunning. On Inner Song, she’s stepped on, not away, from the dreamy pop and techno influences that had informed her output so far, and pushed them to places she can definitively call her own.
It’s not to say her previous work debut didn’t have anything to say, but it takes a heady mix of confidence, purpose and ambition to spin samples of melting glaciers and people skating on thin ice, and convert it into a juddering comment on climate change as she does on ‘Melt’. Even if you take that track without that context, it still stands as a bona fide banger with its thudding car-door-slamming bass battering you to a point of screwed-face, techno-fist satisfaction.
Elsewhere, Owens’ vocal tendrils wisp and twirl in the downtempo electronic haze of ‘Re-wild’, ‘Jeanette’ starts off in the world of Aphex Twin’s ‘On’ before reaching for the lasers without breaking stride, and ‘Night’ hits like an ice-cold version of Jon Hopkins’ ‘Open Eye Signal’.
The points of reference abound, but make no mistake, Inner Song is a showcase of Owens’ rich repertoire that sheds dream pop layers for deep, progressive house and barging techno. The subaqueous rhythms of her debut have evolved, and melodic spoken word intensity is explored on the John Cale collaboration ‘Corner of My Sky’.
Whatever she needed to exorcise to reach this point, it was worth it: this album is a leap in artistry that sees Kelly Lee Owens return fully-formed, hopefully more fulfilled, and damn near flawless”.
I have been listening back to Inner Song a fair bit over the past couple of weeks and I am being struck by songs that, maybe, had a lesser effect on my before. It is one of those albums that really does blossom and throw surprises at you the more you listen. If you have not bought Inner Song, then it is worth getting.
I will end with one more review – this time from NME. They gave the album five stars and were blown away when listening to such a masterful and memorable work:
“Elsewhere, Owens draws on the climate crisis and her love of nature: incorporating samples of melting glaciers and people literally skating on ice, ‘Melt!’ is a call for action, her clipped vocal disappearing into the distance. ‘Corner Of My Sky’, a collaboration with Owens’ homeland hero, the Welsh artist and former Velvet Underground member John Cale, tells the story of the land where they grew up via spoken-word, poetry and song. Carrying a cinematic atmosphere, it paints a vivid picture of why we should appreciate the natural world’s intricacies.
The poignantly instructive repetition of polysemic lullaby-like closer ‘Wake-Up’ stretches this idea, pondering the importance of stopping for a moment: “losing our minds for the short-term gain, short term everything; never pausing to take it in, always avoiding your sense of dread,” Owens sings, her timely lyrics documenting how easy it is to lose touch with what really matters in life.
By allowing her songs to breathe, leaving space for contemplation, ‘Inner Song’ is a perfectly-arranged album where each track has a part to play: an emotive-yet-euphoric collection that’s made for late-night reflection, Kelly Lee Owens has made one of the most beautiful records of the year”.
I shall stop there but, after two studio albums, and Kelly Lee Owens has established herself as one of the finest artists in the world. I think the next few years will be really successful and busy for her. As we begin to slowly move towards normality, she will get the chance to take Inner Song on the road and make up for some lost time. Kelly Lee Owens is a hugely inspiring human and…
A treasure of the current music scene.