In Conversation With #085 - Katie Malco
UK musician Katie Malco has just released her first full length album ‘Failures’ via 6131 Records. It is a collection of songs that sees Katie get personal and delicate as she mourns her past. She took a moment to talk to us about the album in more depth.
Hey Katie, so your debut album ‘Failures’ is out now. How does it feel?
It feels good to finally have it out in the world, I feel like I’ve been sitting on it for such a long time and there was an element of uncertainty around it that’s lifted now it’s out. I’ve honestly been overwhelmed with people’s response and it’s been such a mad time.
It is being released via 6131 Records, how did that partnership come about? Sean who runs the label also manages Julien Baker and he asked me to support her on tour in the UK a couple of years ago. I told him I had an album coming and he kept asking me to send it over when it was done. So I did and then he said 6131 would put it out.
Is there a certain meaning to the album title for you?
Once it was finished, I realised there was a very vivid theme running through the whole record – one of failure, and of picking yourself up and trying again. That’s all that life is, a series of failures and growth. The title comes from the first single ‘Creatures’ – “I see Creatures, they’re my failures”.
Where was the album recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the recording process?
It was recorded in a really diffused way to be honest, and it was a bit of a learning curve in that respect. We first tried to record in my flat, and then do the drums in a practice room, and after we realised that was all going to be pretty difficult we moved into a studio space. Then we lost the studio space after a couple months and moved into a different one, and that’s where we finished the record. There are loads of fragments of recordings from different spaces on the songs. But it was a totally DIY affair, so we had to keep costs to an absolute minimum and I’m proud of what we managed to achieve with very little money.
What are the key themes and influences on the album?
There are two interlacing themes of war and sleep throughout the record – almost two extremes – which ties in to the idea of failing, of losing life’s small battles, and in the case of ‘Creatures’, not even being able to sleep at the end of a weary day of fighting to stay alive, because your failures are crowding your mind. What a cruel joke that is. So you just live out your days in this perpetually numb state while you try and jump over life’s hurdles with no energy. That’s the ‘macro’ theme, the micro themes within each song are to do with growing up, facing adulthood, leaving behind your youth and all the first-time experiences that come with that. First relationships, anxieties around body image and figuring out who you are, family, death…it’s a coming of age record and it documents my life growing up and overcoming these failures that were really pivotal moments.
The album opener ‘Animal’ was written when you were sofa-surfing at friends’ houses, can you tell us a bit more about that track and story?
I had been forced out of my mum’s house by her partner when I was a teenager, he was abusive and an alcoholic, and I had nowhere to go. I ended up going out every single night, doing all the things that go hand in hand with being out every single night, and asking random friends if I could stay over. For months I was just staying at a different person’s house every night until a group of people (who I now call some of my dearest friends) let me live in the box room of their student house for £15 a week. The song was written against the backdrop of all of that, I felt very empty and sad at the time and there was one night in particular where I really overdid it and drank so much that I was incredibly sick, and I just didn’t want anyone to look at me or help me. The line ‘I’m not an Animal I won’t die here for you’ is a message of defiance to myself – this isn’t gonna be my story, this isn’t gonna be my life, this isn’t gonna be how people see me, I’m not just gonna give up and curl up and die while you all look at me like I’m some kind of pathetic mess. It was a failure that eventually led to change.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the album? If so, which one and why?
Interesting question, I haven’t thought about that before. It might be this line from September; ‘And it struck me then that we only served to offer each other temporary relief from solitude, an artificial light in each other’s lives, dimly lit and flickering.’