(Cover art by Cora Rose Nimtz)
Sister Species is the longstanding chamber pop project of Emily Kastrul, also of Betazoid. That funky synth band was how I was introduced to Kastrul's music at large, which subsequently led to Ear Coffee's coverage of the first two singles off of Sister Species' new album, Light Exchanges. Previously titled Still I Am Still, Kastrul and their six collaborators (including three trumpet players) created a love letter to stillness and the peace that comes with it. Allusions to nature and the elements flow in and out of Kastrul's lyrics, as they dwell on their relationship with things greater than any of us. I sent a handful of questions to Kastrul, who was kind enough to answer. The following interview has been edited and (minimally) condensed.
How did the current band that performed on/contributed to Light Exchanges come together? You worked with nearly all of them on the last two Sister Species records as well (2016's Closer Now and 2018's Heavy Things Do Move).
Most of this band came together in 2014/2015. It's really amazing to have a steady group of people to write and play with - we've all grown so much together. The process of finding the right chemistry of a group is a little mystical to me.
The gist of the story is that, after having a rotating cast of musicians for a few years, my friend Yasha started playing trumpet with us in 2013. I met Noah [Ophoven-Baldwin, trumpet] in a book club at that same time and he started playing trumpet with the group in 2014, along with Ben Hovland, who still does some photo/video work for us. Yasha moved out East and Ben started racing bikes more seriously, so Noah invited two other trumpet players he knows from around town - Jake Baldwin and Sten Johnson. Soon after, Ryan Hays joined on bass and Lars Johnson on drums.
I met Willow Waters, our guitarist/backing vocalist, playing in a radical marching band called Unlawful Assembly, and we first connected over her music - I've sang harmonies on her last two albums. For many years, my younger sibling Abby also played in the band. While making Heavy Things, their baking business, Bakery Box, took off, so they left to pursue that full time. We were searching for another guitar player once we knew Abby was leaving and Willow was such an obvious fit.
All of us play in other projects together. Jake, Sten, and Lars all play in McNasty Brass Band; Ryan, Willow, and I play in Willow's band; Noah and Jake play in a group called Drone Band. All of the cross-pollination that happens is really sweet and exciting. The relationships are deep and that makes the music deep too.
How did the threads of the album come together, on both a micro level, such as coming up with song concepts and lyrics, and a macro level, such as the full septet creating the music that ends up being each song? Was the song creation process different from prior records, especially Heavy Things, since it's sort of a thematic inverse of Light Exchanges?
This is our first record with me as the sole songwriter in the band. On past albums, because my sibling was also writing songs that they sang, a lot of the contrast or tension came from our different writing styles. On this album, I had the challenge of finding the contrast and tension that exists within myself.
I think of writing songs as kind of like raising children - even if you know what to expect, each one is so different. A big theme in this record for me was patience, with the exception of "Magnolia Buds," which I wrote most of in one sitting, and "Start with the Mess," which came together over the course of a few weeks. The other songs took a long time to ripen. "Heat Death" is a song I built off of an old voice memo that I saved. "Light Exchanges" started two years ago but it didn't come together until I changed the chorus chords and wrote the bassline for it.
On a full band level, one shift was getting to write with Willow. She's the newest member of our band and it's been such a breath of fresh air having her. She's a really thoughtful guitarists, harmonizer, and human, and has a knack for finding the perfect chord voicings.
Another shift was in our recording process. We tried the "get it while it's hot" technique, which meant that we recorded the album in two separate chunks. At first we thought it was going to just be a four-song EP, since we had four songs ready in the summer, but we ended up finishing two more songs, plus the TPT PRTYs [four short interludes on the record] in the fall. This meant that the songs still had that electricity that a new song has, and that we got to discover exciting parts of the songs while recording them.
I think that going into this record, it was just clear how much we all trust and respect each other. Those pieces have always been there, but the more we play together, the better we get at supporting each other and working together.
What were your inspirations going into the record? A lot of the lyrics and concepts are very closely tied with nature (i.e. light, plants, the elements, etc.).
I'm a gardener/seed-saver/low-key biologist. I like to grow perennials and start plants indoors and raise monarchs. As a gardener, I know that it takes time to observe patterns and that staying put is one of the most exciting ways to see the world around me. So this record for me was noticing all of the subtle things that still move, even when you are still, that in stillness you can hear all the other subtle messages your body is trying to share. There was a lot of patience involved.
A lot of my songs are more focused on the natural world, but celestial/astronomical things and geology are sources of inspiration too. I'm pretty sure every record I've written talks about the Mississippi River at least once - on [Light Exchanges], I wrote "Be Multiple" after a particular early spring walk by the river. I get a lot of my best thinking done walking by the river or pulling weeds in my garden, and it's often the times when I'm focused on other things when new songs/lyrics will invite themselves in.
I use scientifically-inspired metaphors as ways to talk about something personal in an abstract way. I would rather say "You were mine to hold / like the summer snow / the cottonwood trees / in the June breeze" than talk in detail about a relationship ending. I respect that a lot of other artists choose really direct lyrics, but in my writing I try to leave more space for the listener to project their own story.
By using metaphor, I also free myself from the specifics of my own experiences. The imagery and archetypes of the natural world help me to shift my perspective. The practice of noticing things that are going on outside of my body alters my focus. There is something soothing in channeling my deep emotions into metaphors about the natural world. It's a way to release whatever I'm feeling and to remember that even if it's overwhelming, my current emotional state is not permanent nor even necessarily important.
The natural world is full of lessons. Magnolia buds do not care if you're sad. They just bloom when they're supposed to bloom when the time is right. You can spend your whole life worrying if the time is right to do something and magnolia buds will keep on blooming and cottonwood trees will keep releasing their fluffy seeds.
The album title is from the third track on the album. The lyric is "the rapture came and went / I didn't notice the changes / all still and crystalline / a series of light exchanges." In that song in particular, I was reflecting on the strangeness of being in love again and how love is built on many tiny actions over time.
Throughout the album, there's a focus on the actions of our daily lives and how our habits and small, daily choices add up to create character, to create love. There is a lot of attention put on small unfoldings and the information we get from moving slowly enough to notice things, like magnolia buds blooming, cottonwood trees in the June breeze, cutting onions and garlic, my unmade bed, etc.
Our last record Heavy Things Do Move was really focused on heaviness, of loss, of love, of anxiety, [of] other emotions. In [Light Exchanges], I wanted to offer another option. What if feeling things deeply doesn't suck? What if change is about releasing, about ending up lighter? What is the feeling that comes after sadness, after heaviness? I wanted to reconceptualize emotions and relationships as light exchanges. The imagery is like a prism, how one source of light can transform into so many other shapes and colors. In this sense, there's a double entendre of a light exchange as both simple parts of our daily lives and as transformation.
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| (Photo by Ben Kreibich) |
While you try to get out of the immediacy of your own experiences by using metaphor, would you say that a majority of your writing comes from a personal place, whether that's experiences with relationships or things that you simply realized on your own, while gardening or on a walk?
My writing is definitely very personal. It's personal and I like to maintain some privacy in my life. For example, I wrote "Magnolia Buds" after visiting the cactus room at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens while the magnolia trees were blooming last spring. That place has some particular significance for me, but it's not really anyone else's business why. I'd rather say a line like "all comes out right if you give it the time" or talk about "lives that you once could have lived, now erased" than explain the details of a past relationship.
A couple of the songs ("Heat Death" and "Magnolia Buds") also seem to reference the end of the world and the end of oneself.
This again is about finding my own "right sized-ness" and understanding how I fit with everything. Kinda heady, but I feel like thinking about something so big really helps me come back to the present.
Did you want to capture a bigger picture of life as a whole with the record? It's full of small observations of day-to-day life, but it seems to be greater than the sum of its parts.
Totally! There's a lot of thinking about how I fit into the grand scheme of things. Within this focus on daily lives, I'm also looking to different sources for strength and guidance on how to live well. In "Start with the Mess," I quote the V'ahavta (a Jewish prayer) and Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower," and make reference to astrology. [These are] three different types of sacred texts that inform how I live and that help me connect to the larger web of existence.
What did you want to say with the album as a whole? Has your perception changed given present circumstances? If so, how?
I think oftentimes we write things not quite understanding what they'll mean later or how impactful they could be. A lot of the lessons about patience or healing that I was trying to glean [while] writing [the album] feel especially relevant now. I think of lines like "all of the time / I spent distracted by / what had already gone / or not yet to arrive."
Also, touch is so present in this album. Many songs were inspired by different types of intimacy in my life. We got the masters back in mid-March, right before shelter-in-place was called [in Minnesota] and I remember laying on my floor, listening through the whole album. When "Start with the Mess" got to the chorus, which is just the repeating line "put your hands on my face," I couldn't help but crack up. I was trying so hard not to touch my face and that line hit me in a whole different way. Still intimate, still tender, but the stakes feel so different.
As far as the album as a whole, there have been so many songs written about leaving. I wanted to write about the more subtle changes that happen when you stay. Unlike a lot of my peers, I spent most of my 20's staying put here in Minneapolis. I've lived in the same house for seven years, have played under this band name for eight-plus years (five of which with a nearly identical lineup), have worked at the same high school for seven-plus (shout-out Menlo Park Academy!).
I feel lucky to have grown up in a place, in a city, that could hold my changing. This record is about this place that holds me, and also about the relationships that have held me as I've changed - a sometimes messy process. It can feel scary or vulnerable to be held in place, especially when the dominant narrative is that people who play music or who want to "be successful" should move somewhere bigger/more bustling/where they can "win" differently.
In writing this album, I didn't expect these musings on staying to feel so poignant, but here we are! I mostly feel grateful to have so much practice digging into staying put and to have also already unpacked at least the first layer of what makes it hard for me to stay put sometimes.
What role has art played in your life over the past few years? How was that changed in the last couple of months?
Art to me is all about community and bringing people together. Some of my favorite moments have been when my work life and music life have combined, like when my students come to my shows (it's rare but exciting). I also really love using music videos as a way to bring people together. Getting a bunch of friends and neighbors to ice skate together for the "Heat Death" music video was really fun.
So many people in the music community here are either playing, hosting, or attending shows multiple nights of the week. It's beautiful how much we all show up and support each other. I've also talked to a number of people recently who are like, "Wow, I was spending so much time going out to things that I forgot to spend time and connect with myself."
When shelter-in-place started here, I made a print that says "sound is touch at a distance." I've been thinking about that phrase a lot. I really believe in the importance of people being physically together - I don't want to get too used to this current time of separation - and I've also been appreciating other ways that we can "touch." I've been sending and receiving a lot of mail. I've been grateful to have some time to listen deeply to some albums that in my pre-pandemic schedule I would've had trouble making time for.
What is your favorite plant, flower, or tree?
Do I have to pick just one? I really love garlic. If I can pick two, I also love bloodroot.
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