Unwoman Interview for Wicked Spins Radio

WSR – As a writer myself I know what it can be like to get writer’s block, the first thing you wrote after this was Saviors. Doe’s Saviors contain anything from that time of writers’ block and how that affected you?

Unwoman – During the writer’s block I had these bits and pieces of songs coming to me, as they always had, but no ability to put them into a finished song. Saviours is about dating people who fancy themselves on their own little hero’s journey and me having to realize that I need to see myself as the hero of my own journey rather than someone else’s side quest. In a way, the fact that that was the first song after 18 months of writer’s block makes it all the more triumphant.

WSR – What was your initial personal feelings when the writer’s block lifted?

Unwoman – I was relieved. I had tried really hard not to pressure myself too hard to write when I wasn’t feeling it because I have written over a hundred songs at that point, and I took a break to record a lot of cover songs for my patreon, which keeps my recording and producing chops up, and I didn’t want to write music that’s going to be lacklustre. I only want to write songs that I actually care about and found myself with a bunch of topics to write about passionately once the block was over.

WSR – Do you know the root cause of the writer’s block?

Unwoman – There’s this myth of the tortured artist, but people don’t write well when there’s too much going on emotionally. Between early 2014 and later 2015, I had a ton of things going on with my family and romantic life, and my previous techniques of songwriting-as-processing just weren’t working.

WSR – What was it about the works of Jane Eyre and Jane Austin that inspired you so much?

Unwoman – (correction, I think you mean Charlotte Brontë who wrote Jane Eyre; also Jane Austen is spelled with an E 🙂 ) The Brontës are awesome because they wrote Gothic literature during its Revival in the Victorian era, so they’re kind of like the steampunks of their time in that they were really into a thing that was already kind of old at that time and they like really got into it — the most brooding kind of evil men, and revenge, and children treated really badly, and you feel SO strongly for the heroines. “Bad Man” is about what a jerk Mr Rochester is, yet he was (and still is) some kind of sick romantic ideal. Jane Austen, on the other hand, in the early 19th century, was more about humour and subtly subverting social norms. Persuasion is about an “older” (27!) woman finding love with someone she’d mistakenly given up, and it’s Austen’s most tender love story, in my opinion.

WSR – How often do you read and are you for or against the ebook?

Unwoman – I read as often as possible, but I have a young child so it’s difficult. I’m mostly reading short fiction right now (Carmen Maria Machado, Amelia Gray). I think once ebooks are sold like digital music I will be for it — right now it’s so proprietary and I worry about being able to keep DRM formats through different devices. I don’t think people should have to buy the same intellectual property twice, so for now, I’m a paper book reader exclusively, but I certainly don’t begrudge people their convenience. I gave up CDs as soon as I found digital music stores with non-DRM tracks.

WSR – Your style doesn’t fit into any genre which really gives you a very dark and unique style, do you enjoy the darker edge of music more and if so what is the appeal to you personally?

Unwoman – I was at a show the other night (Typhoon) and one of the opening acts was really well-played music but it was so happy, and I would never put on happy music at home, and I realized that the number one factor in whether I’m going to like music is whether it’s in a minor key or mode. Some people, no matter how happy or sad they are, just resonate harder with sad or happy music. I love the blues, I love torch songs, I love industrial music, obviously goth music. Listening to pop music as a young girl I usually got more into the deep cuts, the slow sad songs.

WSR – Why did you decide to make War Stories so aggressively feminine?

Unwoman – That’s just me, really. Now I’ve gotten rid of some of my internalized anti-femme biases, but when I write something that I’m framing as feminine I’m also expanding what it means to be feminine — It’s allowing a feminine person to define femininity for themselves — which is the core of why I decided to call myself Unwoman, to begin with, it’s that I am not enacting womanhood the way someone else defines it.

WSR – The work you did with Matt Fanale of Caustic Beauty Queen Autopsy was amazing, how did this collaboration come about and what was it about both of your style do you feel that worked so well?

Unwoman – Thank you! Matt and I have been mutual fans for a lot of years and he made a post some eight or 10 years ago about looking for a female vocalist and I was like yes, sign me up! and then over a few years, he would send me tracks and I would sing them. He wrote the words and I kind of flushed out the vocal parts of it and recorded my voice. I think of it kind of like an acting gig, but the character that he wrote from the perspective of is one that is kind of a different side of my personality than my Unwoman songs tend to be about but still really relatable for me.

WSR – You do a lot within the Steampunk world, what is it that attracts you to that style?

Unwoman – It’s really the perfect scene for someone like me who is really interested in technology and the future but also the past — 19th-century literature, politics, social justice, anarchism, and obviously the cello. I had a hard time relating to audiences until I found the steampunk audience.

WSR – How do you choose the tracks to cover for any of the Uncovered albums?

Unwoman – Often that ends up being me hearing a version of a song in my head — I love a song, but I hear it a different way in my head and I want to make it. A good example is my “Careless Whisper” cover which I heard as kind of slamming beats with the big solo as cello. Currently, I’m working on a cover of Metric’s “Help I’m Alive” in 3/4 time because for some reason I really want to waltz to that song. And every other month on my patreon I asked my backers there to nominate songs and then everyone who backs me at $2 per song or more get to then vote on the most popular of those nominations. So, every other month I do a fan-chosen song. Those include David Bowie’s “Heroes,” Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Florence and the Machine’s “What The Water Gave Me” (which by the way is about Virginia Woolf, another favourite author of mine.)

WSR – Why do you feel in the past you were a little shy about making sentimental music?

Unwoman – This ties into the anti-femme feelings that I unfortunately absorbed, growing up. When you’re in your teen years and early twenties there’s this idea that sappy songs are cheesy, that it’s not cool, it’s too girly, to have deep and tender emotions and express them, but I realized that the songs that had touched me the most throughout my life were very sentimental songs. So over the last ten years or so I’ve gotten more comfortable with that and now, songs like “We Love Longest” take that further.

WSR – Thank you so much for giving Wicked Spins Radio this interview, is there anything you would like to add?

Unwoman – thank you for talking with me, it’s been a pleasure! I would like to add that I’ll be kickstarting Uncovered Volumes 4-5, a double CD later this year.