Katie Gavin on her debut solo album and making all forms of love pop

It’s a chilly September night and I'm picking my way through wonky gravestones to meet the glow of our destination – the oldest surviving Elizabethan church in London. Inside, Katie Gavin takes to the stage and asks the crowd to sit down, as a hush descends across the mass of people. It's a rightfully intimate setting for one of the MUNA singer’s first run of solo shows.

“I can’t remember the last time I prayed,” she sings on 'Today', an aching song about finding clarity, addressing your own behaviours, and seeking out a new way. “Last time I sinned was today.” Her belly laugh ripples through the crowd.

“That was so funny,” Gavin says, when we catch up the next day in a hotel lobby over tea. “I don’t think I even realised ‘til I was on stage how much religious imagery I was gonna get through. I’d say I’m a spiritual person. That setting was perfect, and made more perfect when we had those light, funny moments together.”

Throughout the gig, Gavin is open and vulnerable. “I’m getting to do new things, and for the first time, again – with all of you,” she says. She restarts the intro of one new track and tells the stories of others. 'She Gives Me Feelings', Gavin says, was almost a MUNA song. It’s a completely different experience from the band's high-energy, riotous shows, where Gavin skips across the stage and sails through her vocal range, alongside Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson, setting fan-favourite Stacey (a blow-up horse toy) free into the audience. Here, Gavin is backed up by multi-instrumentalist Nana Adoja, while friend and collaborator Holly Humberstone makes a brief appearance to sing Mitski’s part on 'As Good As It Gets'. Gavin strums an acoustic guitar, picks the violin, and breaks out the shruti box.

It’s a luminous introduction to her debut solo record What a Relief, out on Friday [25th October] and was written on and off over the course of seven years, with the lead single 'Casual Drug Use' the first she worked on. “I didn’t think I was writing a solo record,” Gavin shares. “When the pandemic was happening, I was talking to my friend Eric Radloff [the artist Okudaxij and Gavin’s college friend] a lot and sending him songs that felt like MUNA cast-offs. In lockdown, we started arranging the songs with Scott Heiner [MUNA’s former drummer] because we had nothing else to do.”

The record took “three iterations”; 10 tracks were recorded in two weeks just as MUNA were signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ label Saddest Factory. Bridgers then introduced Gavin to her producer, Tony Berg, to polish it up. Gavin says she “took a detour” with the help of Amber Bain, the artist The Japanese House. “Amber really championed me and the project,” Gavin says now. They worked together on demos, but with two batches of work that she loved, nothing felt cohesive. “I felt at a dead end,” she says.

After MUNA’s tour, she came back to Tony: “I’ve learned to trust the process – it can be a long, winding road." The final record came quickly across two weeks, fully formed and blazing. What A Relief is a tenacious reckoning with Gavin’s search and desire for connection, her part in obfuscating that, and the work to experience and sustain different forms of love. It's set to what Gavin calls "Lilith Fair-core," founded in country slants and the emotive pop of artists like Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple, as well as the Canadian Women & Songs CDs she grew up on that included Tori Amos and Tracy Chapman. First single 'Aftertaste' is a fantasy about confessing it all to a butterflies-in-your-stomach crush, while album track 'Sketches' unspools the image of a love you no longer believe in. 'The Baton' is a raw, real depiction of intergenerational trauma, while 'Sweet Abby Girl' explores grief for a pet, emotions that rarely get the grace they deserve.

Here, we chat more with about her debut record, all forms of love and fandom, her “pretty, cunty” style, and returning to MUNA.

You’ve been writing this record in many forms for seven years. How emotionally in tune do you still feel with the songs?

Katie Gavin: If I’m playing for other people and they are hearing it for the first time, I can feel their reaction to it really strongly. But a lot of these things are things that I continuously struggle with. Or maybe it’s less struggling, and more things I’m curious for and have big feelings about. So much of the record is about life, love, and intimacy, and you never figure that out.

What I love about the record is the expanse of intimacy and love you show. There’s romantic and familial, flash-in-the-pan and complex. Especially when as a woman, a pop star - as both - you aren’t often afforded that space to be complicated.

Katie Gavin: It made me think about the constrictions that even I put on myself as a ‘pop artist’, to always have to write about romantic love. And when I realised that I was going to have a solo record, I gave myself permission to talk about what was actually taking up space in my life. The song about my dog ['Sweet Abby Girl'] captures when I was going through real grief. I had two senior dogs in the pandemic, and I lost both of them. Everybody who’s lost a dog understands that intensity. It’s another part of human experience that doesn’t necessarily get the shine.

It was cool to feel like everything I experience counts. My life got a lot better when I realised that I need to be investing as much care and attention into other forms of love in my life as I do my crushes.

'The Baton' feels pertinent – you write about intergenerational trauma and how formative the pain you share can be.

Katie Gavin: It’s special, and a hard thing as a writer. Your family members have to put up with you airing a lot of dirty laundry. The concept of intergenerational trauma is painful to talk about. I’m proud of this metaphor. It became wonderful to show my mum a song that has everything in it: our pain, but also my gratitude.

Motherhood as a concept explored in songwriting has so much to give, especially in today’s world where we’re questioning its boundaries, the expectations of it, what forms it can take.

Katie Gavin: Obviously this record couldn’t be more different than Charli’s Brat, but 'Inconsolable' and 'The Baton' are my versions of 'Apple' and 'I think about it all the time.' I’m impressed by her decisions with that all-out pop record. She’s a main pop girl, who approached these themes with such drive and candour. It shows you what a force she is.

You said on stage that one of the themes of your record was “insatiable yearning”...

Katie Gavin: HA! Yes, I did.

I wonder how your understanding of and relationship to your own desire has evolved?

Katie Gavin: Within the arc of MUNA, I got to see that being a songwriter can change my behaviour and patterns. The song 'Sketches' speaks to that – I wrote it when I really thought I was in love with that person, but I realised it was just a sketch of what I thought love is.

If I’m feeling stuck on a hamster wheel, or – and excuse all my use of metaphors – like I’m going to a hardware store to buy milk, or just trying to get something from someone and it’s never gonna happen... then my life gets smaller. I get bored of writing about the same experiences. Songwriting helped me see that I can make those changes. It’s been a big part of widening my gaze.

How do you feel now?

Katie Gavin: I’m in an ambiguous space. I’m someone who feels very strongly. I’ve always had intense crushes and been obsessive. But I think I swung the pendulum too far the other way – if somebody makes me feel something that’s strong, I read that as a red flag. I’ve tried to really control my experience of love so that it doesn’t get in the way of other things that I enjoy about my life. These days, I’m curious about whether there’s another readjustment in store for me.

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It feels like MUNA crafted this clear new space for queerness in contemporary pop. How do you see the landscape now as more queer women come through?

Katie Gavin: I’m proud of the role MUNA played. Having a lesbian pop star when we were starting out in 2014 felt like it couldn’t be real. It’s incredible to see the queer girls having a moment.

Outside of music, what’s inspiring you creatively?

Katie Gavin: It’s mainly books. I’m reading Race For Profit by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. She’s an amazing American histor[ian] that goes into the 1970s and predatory lending in the US housing market for Black homeowners. I work with an organisation called Resource Generation and we’re doing a book club right now. I’m also reading Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse. I feel like she took a knife and cut the world in half! She’s hot to me.

How has your style evolved?

Katie Gavin: I developed a silhouette with MUNA. We worked with Jake Sammis for a few years and he really encouraged me to dress sluttier. Skirts got shorter and the boots got taller.

The latex was latexing.

Katie Gavin: Exactly, and it ruined my skin. It was fun! I have less of a need for armour now. For MUNA’s first album, I felt like I needed to look super hard. I’ve found what makes me feel the most me. A lot of the time, I just want to feel pretty, and it took me a while to realise that’s okay. Doing the solo stuff, I’m wearing more of what I wear in my daily life. Sometimes I wanna feel pretty, sometimes I wanna feel cunty.

Fan interaction has been a big part of recent discourse. A lot of that conversation has been led and challenged by Chappell Roan. MUNA’s podcast Gayotic is a window to you guys, and you have a super engaged fandom. How are you squaring it?

Katie Gavin: I was just in New York and I noticed someone clock me on the street. I saw them get visibly excited… then visibly scared. They said ‘Hi... sorry!’ It’s two things then: it’s cool to see people are taking it in and trying hard to be respectful, and then I also think there’s different levels of fame. MUNA has walked a fine line for so long and I’m so grateful for that. Having a meteoric rise is trauma. It would be untenable for Chappell to entertain everyone who wants to talk to her right now. It’s brave and important that she’s advocating for herself.

I’m proud of Chappell. This is her moment. I love when she gets angry, too. Chappell is six years younger than me, but she’s my role model! Healthy expressions of anger in women – hell fucking yes.

How do you see the live shows going? London was so intimate.

Katie Gavin: I’d like it to stay like that. Nana and I are doing a two person show and we’re playing around. I want a chill vibe and for everyone to feel like we’re hanging out. I encourage sitting down – I’m tired! I want to do a run with a full band, and then back to MUNA.

Are you excited to do MUNA again?

Katie Gavin: Hell yes. I’m excited for new music, lock us in the studio! I get sad and I miss them, but they’re so supportive. And this was the right thing for me as an artist to get these songs out as me, and to understand what could be next for MUNA.

What a Relief by Katie Gavin is out 25th October.