Q&A: Muna’s Katie Gavin on comfort music, creative freedom and her debut solo record

By Anna Furman, The Associated Press on November 14, 2024.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Katie Gavin is self-proclaimed “gay famous.”

The pop band Muna first broke through with “Silk Chiffon,” an anthem to queer joy. Though Gavin, the frontwoman of Muna, has dipped a toe in pop music’s mainstream, she’s definitively, and defiantly, still an indie artist.

On her debut solo record “What a Relief,” released last month on Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records, Gavin channels a bluesy, nostalgic tone to explore intimacy, grief and intergenerational trauma. The lyrics are spare and reflect heartfelt – and at times earnest – realizations about pain and self-discovery. Created over seven years, the album is, as Gavin said, a testament to “how much we change and stay the same” over time.

She’s part of a new wave of musicians – including boygenius, Reneé Rapp, and Chappell Roan – who are reimagining pop and folk-rock traditions with a queer sensibility. To celebrate the release of Gavin’s album, Muna fan groups organized listening parties at lesbian bars like The Ruby Fruit in Los Angeles and Ginger’s Bar in Brooklyn, New York.

Gavin spoke recently with The Associated Press about finding her creative soulmates, getting in touch with her 14-year-old self and her first solo tour in the U.S., which kicks off Monday in Seattle.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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AP: Your Muna bandmates provided feedback and contributed some instrumentals on this album. What was it like though embarking on it, largely solo?

Gavin: They’re both my creative soulmates and collaborators. In some ways they helped decide the track list because the first step in the process was them rejecting songs for Muna.

The process of opening myself up to new people – to work creatively – is very vulnerable.

AP: “Aftertaste” feels like the most MUNA song on this album.

Gavin: It’s a fun song. It feels young. It feels very much in the world of crush and fantasy. Which is one of my favorite kinds of pop songs to write.

The solo project is, by nature, a very measured project. I’m not really making these big, bold, sweeping pop statements. It’s quite small and nuanced. My solo project is very “if you know, you know.”

AP: The ar

tist Catherine Opie photographed the album cover at your home. Can you describe the creative process of working together?

Gavin: It was amazing. I mean, she is a legend to me.

There was a photo that she had taken – on view at Regen Projects – of a recent girlfriend in a bedroom with a bunch of stuff strewn everywhere. That photo was on every mood board and every treatment that I made for this album. It was the wallpaper on my computer. I was just like, “This is the vibe.”

AP: This album references Alanis Morissette, the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos and others. Do you get superstitious about listening to others while creating and recording new work?

Gavin: There are certain artists that I avoid listening to, if I notice that they really stick to me. I couldn’t really write like Tori (Amos) or Fiona (Apple), even if I really tried super hard to emulate them, so I’m not that worried about it. I’m not a prodigious piano player, so it’s going to be fine, you know what I mean?

I mainly do listen to lesbians or lesbian-adjacent women from the ’90s.

AP: You’re about to go on your first solo tour in the U.S. to almost entirely sold-out shows.

Gavin: I’m really excited about that. Except for the part of touring in the Midwest in mid-December. There’s something very poetic about the solo tour for this record putting me back in Chicago in the winter. Really brutal. We’re doing it in a van, and I haven’t been back in a van, you know, in a minute.

AP: Who do you hope listens to this album?

Gavin: I just saw a childhood friend this weekend and he gave me the nicest compliment. He was just like, “I know that if we showed this to you when you were 14, you would have thought it was the coolest record.”

I would love for queer people and girls at that age to find something in this record and to attach to it. The music that I listened to when I was 14 and 15 is so important to me. Those are my comfort records.

AP: You’ve spoken before about the kind of sacrifices that musicians make for their art. What did you mean by that?

Gavin: Sometimes you have to disappoint people who want the creative direction to go a certain way … But if you know in your heart that your vision is different, then you have to follow your vision.

Being an artist does require a lot of sacrifice. Like, I don’t have the same stability in my personal life and domestic life because of my job. But I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

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