MUNA’s Katie Gavin announces new solo project ahead of Newport Folk Festival performance
WBUR | July 23, 2024
If you’ve only heard one MUNA song, it’s probably the catchy, sapphic single “Silk Chiffon.” “She said that I got her if I want/ She’s so soft like silk chiffon,” lead singer Katie Gavin sings about the dreamy, airy feeling of falling in love.
The queer indie-pop trio met at the University of Southern California in 2013 and have hit huge milestones since, releasing three studio albums, opening for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” and selling out two nights at the Greek Theatre, which became “Live at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles,” a live album released on June 28.
Gavin also plays guitar, Naomi McPherson is on synths and guitar, Josette Maskin plays guitar and keys and all three work on production. The trio, who are also best friends, release a weekly podcast called “Gayotic” (launched in 2021) where they hang out and discuss bizarre topics from signing a record deal to answering “would you rather” questions, like one involving a phallic-shaped car. And in June 2022, they got matching “7.7” tattoos in honor of the Pitchfork score for their second album “Saves the World” ahead of the drop of their third record, “MUNA.”
The band will perform at Newport Folk Festival on Friday, July 26, but that’s not the only exciting event happening this week for Gavin. The 31-year-old announced her first solo project and released her first single “Aftertaste” on Tuesday, July 23, from her debut solo album “What a Relief” coming Oct. 25. Gavin said she decided to release her album in between MUNA records because she didn’t want her solo music to ever compete with her band’s work.
Gavin’s upcoming project encompasses seven years of her life and reflects on the ways she loves and how generational trauma influences her ability to love. Through country and alt-rock sounds, she engages in a therapeutic discovery of why she approached relationships in certain ways when she was in her early 20s and how she actively works to repair those damaging processes now. She also sings a lovely tribute to her late dog Abby.
I hopped on a Zoom call with Gavin and her cat Button from her apartment in Los Angeles. As she folded laundry, she discussed healing from past unhealthy relationship patterns, shared advice for people stuck in similar cycles and explained the importance of growth in romantic partnerships.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maddie Browning: As a part of MUNA, you recently released your first live album. I love the ‘80s-inspired, futuristic build on your first song “What I Want.” Tell me what it felt like to start playing at the iconic Greek Theatre for a sold-out audience.
Katie Gavin: It felt like such a homecoming and an arrival for us. When we started as a band, that was truly the peak of what we were dreaming might happen for us. Playing the Greek, to us, means that you’ve made it, so it was really crazy. And we played two nights, so it was like, “Okay, we have to start dreaming new dreams and setting new goals.”
But it also made me realize how special it is that we’ve gotten to slowly build this audience of people that are so cool and so good to each other. The only things that I’ve heard from people that … it was a cathartic experience because of this shared connection and shared vibe… I just know that that’s really, at the end of the day, what made those nights so special.
In an interview with VICE in 2022, you talked about how you found a lot of inspiration in relationship turmoil. McPherson said, “In [our first] two albums we have like… one f—ing happy song.” In your 2022 self-titled album, you leaned into the joys of falling in love through poppier music. Tell me more about that transition.
I feel like it’s pretty common to have — maybe regardless of sexuality, but especially amongst queer people, especially in my generation, because I think a lot of us lived through our adolescence closeted — this bend toward unrequited love. I also was into unavailable people for a really long time, and … it took me a while to be willing to look at my own part in those patterns. So I wanted to change how I was acting, and I took some time off of dating in my mid-20s. And then when I started dating again, it was different.
I also felt that our second record was very in your head. That was when I was really doing the therapy work of like, “Why are my relationship patterns so f—ed up?” And then I wanted the third album to be much more embodied and in the world because I’d started dating again, so it was just … the word confessional has such a negative slant because of misogyny. We use that to talk about women’s songs like, “Oh, they’re not really creative. They’re just like reading you their diary.” But my songs really do mirror just what was going on in my life at the time. So I think getting older, people are afraid of it, but I’ve just felt better as I get older, and I’ve been able to treat myself better.
Do you have advice for people who are in a similar cycle?
I think it takes so much more gentleness with yourself. I’ve learned a lot about how negative self-talk and shame really contribute to continuing that cycle of going back to people that aren’t good for you or that don’t treat you well. And I had to do so much capacity building for just validating myself… I was like, “Why is this so easy for other people to let go of someone who isn’t treating them well?”
I had to mythologize it in kind of a crazy way. I had to be like, “I’m actually a hero for going no contact with this f—— person. I’m actually the bravest, strongest person in the world.” … I realized that part of why I was so vulnerable to that was because I wasn’t practicing a lot of intimacy in other relationships in my life. Opening up to Naomi and Jo about all that stuff and relying on them actually helped me a lot and realizing that I needed a larger community of people to reach out to helped me a lot. Getting hobbies helped me a lot. That’s why it’s so funny to me that people think I’m so wholesome, because I literally have to have hobbies because I’m such a feral, obsessive freak.
It just matters that we keep our eyes on Gaza and that you’re sharing resources with people. Because it’s not an easy thing to sustain attention on something that’s so heartbreaking. I also know that everyone is different, like even within my band, we show up to movement in different ways, so it’s not really an answer just for musicians, but it’s for everybody. I really encourage people to get to know themselves in terms of what allows them to continue to show up for the people that need us, that are starving and dying. For me, going to direct action and having consistent relationships with people that are organizing in LA helps me in terms of being held accountable. There are other people that are better at doing stuff online and sharing information… You gotta say it, too. Don’t be afraid to be explicit and just say, “Free Palestine,” and that they’re experiencing a genocide.
You are now embarking on a solo project. On your debut album “What a Relief,” you are exploring the nuances of relationships and love. Tell me more about that.
This record is something that has been in the works for a really long time, because I’ve just been collecting songs through the years that I needed to write, but when I showed them to Naomi and Jo, we all felt like maybe they weren’t in the world of MUNA. They were something different. I’ve been saying to people, the dumbest version of this is like MUNA is my Lady Gaga, and this is my “Star is Born” moment. This record is more like me at home and the rest of my life. It involves stuff about my pets and stuff about my family and stuff about beautiful relationships that didn’t work out and bad relationships that I’ve really needed to learn to let go of and forgive people. It’s interesting, because normally with MUNA records, they span a couple of years of what’s going on in life, and this spans a much longer period of time. It’s kind of beautiful because recording it, I needed to have love and acceptance for a younger version of me. I don’t really feel like I can say this because it’s me, but hopefully, people think that there’s some wisdom on the record and that it comes from this lighter place of, “It’s gonna be okay, baby.”
Your first single “Aftertaste” reflects on the overwhelming warmth of new love. What does “living on the aftertaste” mean to you?
It feels like the beginning of something, but it’s actually a song about when you have an experience with somebody and then time passes, whether that’s like you hooked up with someone once and then just didn’t hear from them for a long time, or maybe you tried dating someone, but the timing wasn’t right, but I definitely experienced that a lot of carrying a torch for somebody. So, to me, “living on the aftertaste” is about when you have a memory of a romantic experience with someone that you’ve really been using for nourishment, and then this song takes place when you see that person again and like what you’re hoping is really going to happen.
On “Sketches,” a song on your upcoming album, you realize a relationship you thought was love wasn’t love at all. What did it feel like thinking back to these moments when you discovered what love is supposed to be like?
It’s just sweet. Honestly, a lot of making this record was very sweet. It feels like doing inner child work or something. “Sketches” was a song that I didn’t really know that I felt that way until I wrote it. I was just talking to a friend this morning about this question of, “Is it possible for something to actually be love if it’s unrequited versus the love of real intimacy, when two people are trying to do the work together?” And the cool thing about that is I actually don’t know the answer…
There’s a metaphor in that song of the litmus test for love being if you are growing when you are in it, and that’s my marker… That song is about realizing that there’s certain relationships I’ve been in where my life becomes really small, and it becomes like, “Is this person giving me the attention that I feel like I need to survive?” If you are getting smaller in your relationship with somebody, then it might not actually be love, it might be something else. I’m definitely a limerence girly. I was thinking about love and limerence when I wrote “Sketches.”
The album is deeply personal with songs about substance use and generational trauma.
Slay.
(Laughs) What has the experience been like pulling all of these parts of yourself into music for a large audience?
I think one of the things I’ve learned about myself as a person is that it’s not actually that big of a deal for me. This is gonna come back and bite me in the ass because when I’ve been doing a press cycle for it and I’ve been talking about it for months, I’ll probably feel a different way… But I do think that I have a lot of stamina for talking about deeper things and heavier things because it’s what I think about all the time, so it just was natural. It wasn’t something that I made a conscious choice about with these songs, and I’m not in that place anymore. So it feels kind of cool to be able to share these things that I really went through, but it doesn’t feel as raw.