Austra

In her latest songs, it shows more than ever that Katie Stelmanis is both romantic and pragmatic. You can hear it in every track of Olympia, which is as baroque and fantastical as ever in its musical composition, completely unconstrained by genre boundaries – yet disarmingly direct in both its infectious hooks and its lyrics which deal with the minutiae of friendship, love and everyday life with all the seriousness they deserve. Full of questions and advice directed boldly at her real-life friends, it's a reminder to us all that the people around us are as important as any high-falutin principles or fantastical visions. The ordinary is romantic. None of this is contrived, though – though this album is her most collaborative to date, its sounds and themes are just a natural expression of who Katie is and how her experiences have affected her. Her whole life long she's pursued a very individual creative mission and followed her passions, which has led to her unique musical approach. From early childhood on, her interest was in classical music: without any pressure from her parents she threw herself into learning instruments, and even more so into opera and choral singing – she performed with the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus from the age of ten. “I never even went to a rock show until I was eighteen or nineteen,” she says “and I never had any interest in whatever pop culture was around. I was just focused on what I was doing.” Maya and Katie would join the band Galaxy together, then in 2009, together with bassist Dorian Wolf, they formed Austra. Initially conceived of as a solo project for Katie, Austra was, she says, “always a work in progress.” Their 2011 debut album Feel it Break was, literally, an experimental record: not in that it was difficult – it was warmly received and won critics' awards, particularly at home in Canada – but that “we had no idea how to realise the sounds I had in my head, so we were working out the processes all the way along.” No wonder, then, that despite the record's success, by the time the whole cycle of producing it, promoting it and touring was over, Katie felt ready to drop. “I had,” she says, “not exactly a breakdown, but this period of a few months where I was lost, I just had no idea what to do with myself.” Where lesser musicians could have become self-indulgent or stuck in a rut at this point, Katie went the opposite way. Using all the discipline she had applied to classical music as a kid, she reviewed and renewed her working methods, learning from everything that had gone before – and Olympia is the result. It's the sound of a 27-year-old who has never stopped learning, and who is more open than ever to new ideas. “This record,” she says, “has more of Maya and Dorian in it than ever – the process of playing with them, especially with Maya just putting down riffs, has been absolutely vital to it. I'd never let people in before, but this time I was ready... A lot of the lyrics, as well, were written by our backing vocalist Sari [Lightman]. Sari helps me create ideas, add important lines, fill in the blanks – and lyrically this is the strongest thing we've ever done!” Katie has certainly stayed in touch with what's important to her, not least musically. Throughout this album you can hear her classical songwriting sense of drama, and all the electronic groove that Maya first introduced to her back in their teens. In fact, she says of the album “it's a record played on acoustic instruments, but all we were listening to while we made it was dance music.” Whether it's the haunting downtempo songs like the miniature 'I Don't Care (I'm a Man)' and album opener 'What we Done?' or the addictive electropop of 'Painful Like' and 'We Become', you can hear that electronic pulse throughout. And this time Katie's ready for the crash that can come after the album cycle: “I just want to make dance music now!” she laughs. “I can make instrumental music where it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, that's my next outlet, and that's what I'm doing now the album's finished.” Still as focused as ever, still as methodical yet driven as the schoolgirl trying out new instruments that she once was, she's still navigating the spaces of what it means to be a musician in the 21st century with aplomb, mature good sense and – yes – that intense romanticism that has sustained her all along.