[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm especially grateful for everyone who came to the New York Public Library last night, or follow the live livestream for our Get Lit Bookclub event with Stacy Schiff and Rosanne Cash. If you missed it, we'll air selections from it on tomorrow's show.

We have a new Get Lit pick because it is a new month the novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. He will be with us at the SNFL Library Space on Friday, February 24th. We have another opportunity for you to see radio being made. Join us in WNYC's Greene Space on Friday, February 10th for a live version of our show. We have special guests, including Yo La Tengo.

For tickets and more information, go to wnyc.org/thegreenespace. Now on today's show, we'll talk with artists Faheem Majeed about his new exhibit on the High Line, and we'll hear from the legendary Janis Ian, who is up for a Grammy this year. While we're on the subject of cool women who make music, let's get this show started with Kimbra.

[music]

Is this the way we fall out of love?

Is this the way we say it's enough?

No drama, no exit plan

No thrown hands up in the air

No arrival at the end

Is this the time you try tell the truth?

You say it's me, I say it's not about you

No color, no exodus

No harm and no accidents

No taking back what I said

The end never comes like you thought it would

I've been trying to hold tight to something good

Is it the point of no return?

'Cause I miss the way we were

I miss the way we were

Outta sight, outta mind

Alison: That's the way we were, a song that gets into some of the themes on New Zealand Born New York-based musician Kimbra's new album, A Reckoning. Those themes include anger, chaos, conflict violence, sex, heartbreak, protest, and self-assertion with track titles like personal space and new habit. A Reckoning is Kimbra's fourth album, but it's her first as an independent artist. In 2011, she signed a multi-album deal with Warner Brothers Records, and shortly after she scored a number one hit and a Grammy for record of the year with the song, Somebody That I Used To Know with Australian musician, Gotye.

Three solo albums released, on Warner followed, but eventually, she released it wasn't the right fit and exited her deal in 2018 with the album Primal Heart. With the release of A Reckoning, Kimbra wrote on Instagram, "What do I hope for album number four? I just hope I'm getting better at telling the truth in my songs, at giving you permission to go to new places." Kimbra will be at Webster Hall on February 16th, and she joins me now for a listening party. Hi, Kimbra. Welcome back.

Kimbra: Hi, Alison, nice to meet you on the radio. [laughs]

Alison: I know. I think last time you were here it was the before times when we could actually do live performances, but hopefully, we'll have you back in the studio sometime soon.

Kimbra: I'm such a big fan, let me say. I listened to your show all the time, so it's really an honor to speak with you.

Alison: Right on. Thank you so much. You released this album independently, what were you able to do differently working as an independent?

Kimbra: Truthfully, there were two voices in the room, it was my own and the co-producer. That's really liberating as an artist not to have men in hats coming through and being like, "Make the chorus bigger." We really just wanted to, like you said earlier, tell the truth. Get to some very confronting parts of the human psyche and the work, and find a sonic identity that felt really original. Yes, sometimes you got to do that by just not having too many cooks in the kitchen, and yes, that was new for me. I've often had a lot of people involved in my career, so this felt really good.

Alison: What was challenging about having to really be the bottom line to have to make all the decisions?

Kimbra: Trusting yourself. You have to consistently trust that your instincts are on and trusting the co-producer. At times, I would send him productions I'd done and he'd turn everything off, and just put my voice up there and redo the prepared piano or put a whole ‘nother track underneath it. I'd have to really surrender to trusting that he was helping tell my story with that music. Yes, and of course then building the team to put it out. That can be really overwhelming when you've been used to having an infrastructure behind you that supported the whole thing. I really had to step into my power as they say and take a bet on myself and really believe in this work more than ever.

Alison: What events led to you deciding, you know what, I'm going to be an independent artist now. I'm going to leave the big, as you said, a place that can be very supportive because it has the infrastructure, but also record labels can be machines.

Kimbra: I think we were wanting different things. It's like a relationship, it's never just walking out with your hands up. It's a discussion and people realizing we're just going in different directions. I think I benefited a ton from being in that kind of machine like you said. It was incredibly supportive in some ways, and also made me doubt myself and others and feel confused about where my own voice was. At this point of my life, I think the industry's changing so much as well that we are able to put out records in really creative ways.

It didn't feel like I needed a clinging to that as much as perhaps I felt like I needed to in the past. Yes, I think I've identified that my work as an artist is leaning into experimental spaces within pop, and I want to have the team and people around me that are going to encourage me toward that. As opposed to trying to continue to conform it or put it into a box which is just it's not what I'm best at, honestly. What I'm best at doing is being quite playful within music and collaborating with unexpected people and all of that.

Alison: Kimbra, were these songs that you had written previously, or you had ideas about previously, and they just didn't fit into whatever track you were on before. Is this all-new material just work that has come to you, ideas that have come to you since you left and go?

Kimbra: Yes, it's a mix, Alison. It's like a couple of songs were written so far back in the past I'm telling you. One of them was actually written for a Rihanna songwriting camp where I was pulled into work for her record. When it didn't get picked up for the final cut I just thought, “Oh, you know what, that's a song that I could never really sing myself." It's written for this empowered, amazing, big pop star. I could never -- as I started to change the sonic world of the songs and put them in a different context, I realized that these were lyrics that I could sing.

I needed to grow up a bit before I could own those sorts of words. The songs are always there in the background and they find their home many years later. Of course, there were songs I wrote at home in the pandemic in my East Village apartment, lonely as ever and just sitting at my piano trying to really investigate what I was going through. I had the title A Reckoning long before we started using that word politically in so many contexts in our world. I knew that I was doing a deep work and that it was going to require a lot of new material based on the time we were in.

Alison: Let's listen to that track that you mentioned, the one that you ended up writing at a song camp for Rihanna. Let’s listen to gun. This is from A Reckoning. Here's Kimbra.

[music]

I earned the right to talk this way

Ain't no one gonna make me change

I earned the right to say

I'm the [censored], so shout my name

I earned my right to walk this way

Look at the goddamn life I made

But you don't know the price I paid

I've done my time in the gutter, gutter

Ain't bowing down to another, another

Breaking through all the smokescreens you put up

Ooh, back then we were so good

Don't you smile in my face

'Cause the words that you said

Feel like a gun to my head

I'm through

Alison: That is Gun from Kimbra's new album, A Reckoning. Kimbra will be at Webster Hall on February 16th. By the way, that track is so interesting to me because I love all the production and the ornamentation, but you can hear the song clear through it. I think that's really important for songwriters to be able to hear the song. Do you know what I mean?

Kimbra: Yes. I do, I do, and that's why finding the right sonic home is so important because you want to reveal that, you want to reveal the bones. That takes a really visionary person to hear the lyric, and find just the right characters to sit there to tell the story. It's cool that that song lasted the test of time. It shows that it had good bones over those years.

Alison: In an interview with Paper Magazine, you mentioned that part of your process for writing this album was to collect photographs of people right on the edge-- right on the verge of breaking. What was useful to you in that exercise?

Kimbra: It's a curious place when people are right about to react, when they're right about to make a huge decision in the world, they're right about to throw a punch, do violence or something. There's that four seconds where people reckon with themselves, where they face a confusing emotion and they decide what they're going to do. You know how so many photographs are so posed and poised?

Alison: Yes.

Kimbra: I'd come across a photograph of someone with a furrowed brow looking right about to scream at someone. I just was so inspired by how to capture that sonically, how to capture a breaking point, how to capture melancholy that's mixed with grief and longing. These internal landscapes that are really complex and it's contradictory and then make pop songs out of it. That's just what I like to do.

Alison: I was just looking up this, there's this great Jenny Holzer piece that's at the Walker Art museum, and there a series with benches and it describes this moment you're talking about. It says there's a period when it's clear that you have gone wrong but you continue. Sometimes there's a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens. That moment before that you were talking about sort of that idea of looking at people about to break like, what is about to happen, and what can happen in that time, whether it's four seconds or for hours.

Kimbra: Yes. Wow. That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. It's a perilous place.

Alison: It is, but also the magic can happen in those moments. There's a really great funky song on here called la type. Let's listen to la type and then we'll talk about the inspiration for it, and then some of your collaborators on it as well. This is Kimbra.

[music]

I don't wanna be your lover

I don't wanna be your friend

Out here I've been seeing double

It's like everybody's out to win

They're making the news

Breaking the rules

And taking it way too far

Shoot for the stars

Money and cars

Then smile for the camera

The sun shines all-year 'round

And everybody's got the time

To keep their teeth so white

If you're young, willing and able

Then all your dreams come true

All I'm saying is I don't wanna waste your time

Hate to break it to you, I'm not your LA type

Alison: That's la type from Kimbra. The lyrics in there about some of the fakery and some of the compromise that comes with trying to make it in LA. There's a line about Chateau Marmont moments, the fancy famous hotel, a very sceney kind of place. Was there a moment that led to that song, or was it just the cumulative effect of LA?

Kimbra: I wrote that song in LA with one of Lizzo's main producers. I think I turned up at the session after sitting in hours of traffic. I'd been, I don't know, disillusioned by various lunch meetings that had just left me feeling vapid and empty. I just decided to just write a song about that experience. I think I have a particular insight into it because being a musician in the industry, living in LA making records there is a particular experience. I love LA, of course, there's so much great stuff about it. There's this subculture that's really lacking in substance, and that classic question of what do you do rather than who are you.

I tried very hard to fit in and to live that life. I think a lot of this record is me just accepting who I am, it's just not really my scene and that's okay. There's a certain person that I quite frankly don't have time for these days. A lot of-- finding your power as a woman and especially as an independent artist is finding out what you like and finding out just what you don't like. Being able to speak that and having the courage to own that. It's a bit punk rock, it's a bit tongue in cheek, and just having fun with some of those parts of that city that make it a walking kind of-- just comedy. It's an amazing place, but it's also hilarious.

Alison: Who are some of your collaborators on that track? There's some names people might recognize.

Kimbra: Totally, yes. I had trouble finishing the track because it wasn't feeling quite right at the end and I needed a very specific kind of-- I wanted some throwback energy but I also wanted to feel very modern. I ended up asking Jacob Collier to do some of the Hollywood backing vocals, some of those oohs and ahhs that just make it feel like it's shining from another world.

I asked Questlove to put down a kind of really like ‘70s funk, almost like The Meters or Betty Davis. We did that at Electric Lady, and Questlove brought this backbone to the song that just gave it that attitude. If you're going to make a song like this, it needs to feel so sassy and in your face. Having them contribute to the track just gave it that extra sparkle, I guess.

Alison: Audio platform shoes.

Kimbra: Yes, exactly. [laughs]

Alison: You have a couple of guest rappers and hip-hop artists on the record. How did you know you wanted to weave in some elements of hip-hop?

Kimbra: Hip hop's a huge part of my influence, especially my vocal phrasing, my experience of rhythm comes from a lot of rap. La type I knew I wanted to have rappers on it, and I was making a lot of music with a guy called Tommy Raps, and a big fan of Pink Siifu. They both ended up contributing to it and really digging the track, which was cool. There's a song on the record GLT, which I had Erick the Architect jump on.

I think it is a bit of a nod to just how much of an influence it is on me. I also think it's the genre that's probably most progressive at the moment. It's where I think some of the most creative music is happening. One of my idols, Kendrick Lamar, for example, I see as like one of the leading forces of jazz, and music, and even pop songs. It's also a nod to other music I'm working on. I have stuff in the works that is leaning a lot more into that influence, so it's a transition into where I might be going next.

Alison: My guest is Kimbra, the new album is A Reckoning. Kimbra will be at Webster Hall on February 16th. The song on the album that you've said it pretty much sums up a lot of the themes is replay! and it has this wild music video. How did you want to represent this song visually? People are going to go Google it after this interview, and they should.

Kimbra: I wanted it to feel very physical. I think we spend a lot of time in our heads, and especially with the last five years and all that we've been through. I think returning to the body is a very powerful means of growth and also protest. Its life force, our life force lives in the body. I knew I wanted choreography and I wanted it to be provocative and subversive in some ways, and make people feel a little bit uncomfortable. Because so much of what lives in my own mind I want to run away from sometimes.

A Reckoning is about taking a long hard look at all of that stuff, and honestly, it's a lot less scary when you do that. If we were all to talk about the things we're afraid of in our own minds, we would all feel a lot more connected. This is how I moved through my emotions as I face them head-on. I do it in music videos, I do it in performance, and in records. It just felt right to lean into some of those more scary parts of my inner world because it's how I grow through them.

Alison: Let's hear replay! from Kimbra.

[music]

What you doing with my head?

I can't get caught up again

What's the matter with my head?

Stuck in automatic

What's the matter with my brain?

I'm master of my domain

What you playing in my head?

Can't stop the replay

Well I'm all play, I don't hate, don't wanna fight

Bite bullets cause I gotta get you out of my sight

But I don't want the movies to play in my mind

Drunk on your touch like a moth to the fire

I don't wanna be followed around and torn up Over and over and over

But I don't wanna feel nothing without you around

What

What

Alison: That is replay! from Kimbra. The new album is called A Reckoning. You worked with Ryan Lott of Son Lux on this album. Had a good fortunate to talk to him about scoring Everything Everywhere All at Once. He's nominated for an Oscar for that, that's exciting.

Kimbra: Huge.

Alison: What did you want from him as a producer? What do you think you also needed from him as a producer?

Kimbra: I knew I wanted to explore catharsis. You hear it on that song, that explosive feeling of just breaking loose. I needed someone that could capture those kinds of aggressive sounds. I think of the bold production choices that Kanye has made in the past where it's just those big scene changes that are just like whoa, and I heard him doing that on a lot of his records.

He also catches a real subtlety and a quiet whispering kind of ominous thing, which I think people are drawn to the vulnerability in my work too. It was like how-- he just felt like he could mix in those two strong forces that I wanted to capture. I'm drawn to a lot of film schools as well, so the fact that that was such a big part of his influence felt really good. I think he'd been on tour with me. We'd been on a co-headline tour and so he'd seen something on stage that he felt wasn't being shown completely in some of my other records.

Alison: That’s interesting.

Kimbra: He came at it with a strong focus to like, "There's something that you haven't showed your fans yet that I see on stage, and I want to find that in the record. That was compelling to me. That's why you work with a producer, is that they're going to hopefully find something that you haven't found yourself yet.

Alison: Let's listen to a track that actually features Ryan Lott. This is called Foolish Thinking.

[music]

Anyone can tell you that I'm no faint of heart

I'll fight fire with fire, for the ones that I love

Like a broken needle, I can't penetrate the skin

Feel I'm on the outside looking in

But who am I to tell you what to do with your life?

Who am I to warrant what's wrong and what's right?

It's not my place, and no matter what I say

Alison: That's foolish thinking, from Kimbra. The new album is called A Reckoning. Not only are you making new music and producing new music, you also have a podcast called transcendence-- the topic is transcendence, excuse me. The podcast is called Playing with Fire, the topic is transcendence.

Kimbra: That’s right.

Alison: When you're talking about transcendence, do you have a perfect dream interview subject?

Kimbra: [chuckles] Actually, that's why I've made it about that topic because I truly love talking about these spaces that are pretty difficult to talk about because they don't have a clear ending. None of us can summarize the beyond or what we're all searching for, whether it's God, or Spirit, or whatever. It's this very abstract place. I think it's a very connective unitive place where we all humble ourselves and go like, "I simply don't know what I experienced on that mountain top moment, but it changed the course of my life."

Again, maybe it's related to my interest in A Reckoning. Those four seconds where you have a prayer-like experience where you just feel changed somehow, or an overwhelming sense of unconditional love or whatever it is. I think more than we talk about, I think it's driving a lot of artists. It's very personal and often they're quite private about those moments.

I think there's a lot of podcasts talking about how you achieve the synthesizer sound and the verse of a great song. That's super interesting, I'm a total nerd for that stuff. Maybe during the pandemic, I felt this real need to be talking about those parts of the human experience that lead us outside of ourselves and give us a sense of driving purpose, a striving, an ambition for a greater good.

When you open these sorts of conversations people have the most incredible stories to tell, and some of them are very ordinary like just catching the morning light, hitting dust molecules in the air. Feeling like they're infinitely connected to the world. Maybe it's a ecstatic euphoric moment at a music concert hearing everyone sing your song. It's like who knows what it is. Maybe it's a psychedelic isotrope. Damn, I just want to talk about this stuff. I love getting into that place of mystery with people.

Alison: This is such a great segue to the last song we're going to hear because it's the opening track. You wrote it after a therapist told you to write a song no one would ever hear. What did that prompt do for you? What did it open up for you?

Kimbra: I didn't have to worry about being embarrassed. I think we don't say things because we don't want to look weak. Especially when you're in my position where I know that I'm inspiring to young woman. It's like I want to uphold a message of positivity or being strong and empowered. The truth is I don't feel like that a lot of the time. Being given this permission to just write something that was just for me to simply get it off my chest.

No one had to hear it. There was no accountability to explain it. That was pretty freeing. Of course, as life goes I listen back to it on my headphones walking through Washington Square Park, and thought, "People need to hear this. Someone's going to hear this and feel like they're understood." Then, of course, I did release it, but it started very privately. I feel like it was sacred.

Alison: The album is called A Reckoning. Kimbra will be at Webster Hall on February 16th. Thank you so much for sharing part of your day with us, Kimbra.

Kimbra: Thank you for your thoughtful questions. This was a great chat.

Alison: Let's listen to save me.

[music]

I'm the accident, waiting to happen

It's just a matter of time

Back of the car again

Wondering why I got so--

 

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