CREDIT: ROBIN GARTNER
Canadian singer/songwriter Kinnie Starr is producing big sound waves with her new album, From Far Away.

I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Canadian recording icon Kinnie Starr about her brand new album, From Far Away, released this week on September 30.

Starr first made her career back when recording artists dressed like Blossom, releasing her first album Tidy in 1996. Even then, she made it difficult for people to categorize her music, blending musical styles with her distinct brand of vocals, spoken word poetry and rap.

Nearly 20 years have gone by, and Starr hasn’t slowed down a bit. In addition to several acting gigs and a stint performing in stage shows with Cirque du soleil, she won a Juno Award in 2010 as producer of Digging Roots’ sophomore record for Aboriginal Album of the Year. An activist and pundit, she was even recently approached to participate in David Suzuki’s Blue Dot Tour across Canada and will be appearing in Ottawa and Victoria.

“I’m trying to spread optimism, basically,” she said about her album. It features Starr’s usual mix of musical flavours over a range of hip hop-infused beats, and she sounds far from stale as she moves fluidly between English, French and Spanish.

Acoustic guitars lend a gentler vibe to album offerings like the opener “Touch The Sky” or the title track, which dramatically offset more powerful numbers like “Auto Space Praise” or “Lady In The Streets.” The single “Save Our Waters,” which features Ja$e El Nio, represents this dynamic well but won’t prepare you for the energy of album closer “First Time” with its seasoning of EDM textures.

Always writing and recording where she can find the time, Starr says she doesn’t concern herself with controlling her creative process or channeling it through any particular means but rather stays prepared for inspiration to strike at any time.

“I used to describe songwriting as song-catching,” she said. “Songs will come at me as ideas and melodies, and I have to catch them.”

Starr chose the 10 album tracks from a pool of 30 she’d gathered.

“There’s no other way to describe it; I have to stop what I’m doing and record melodies or jot down notes, because I can feel the song floating around me, but I have to catch it, or it’s gone.”

Starr is on the lookout for songs that are larger than her. “Yeah, I’ll flesh out the material a little bit, but the songs that really stay with me are those where the idea seems relevant or valuable or beautiful ... something in it resonates. That’s the material I’ll really push forward with.”

While she may not control or inhibit her songwriting process, Starr puts her ideas through the wringer, striving to get to the core of a given song by workshopping it against different styles of music. Starr described how the song “Summer Day” on the album evolved into the bright acoustic pop song that it is, despite beginning as an idea that more closely resembled a traditional jingle dress song; the song was re-imagined with hip hop, electric guitar and more until its universal theme shone through. As Starr put it, “this is the essence of the song, because it lives through every variation.”

“We’re living in an era where everything has to be so fucking finessed before it reaches the public,” she sighed, reflecting on popular studio methodologies. “I really like music that feels alive, and I’m not afraid to falter on my records or make performances that are kind of weird if the song wants that. That’s a big reason I record myself.”

“When I’m older, I want to be able to listen to the music and hear what I was going through in my life, I don’t want it to just be this fucking perfect, cookie-cutter, fame-seeking bullshit – I want it to feel very real, even if it is flawed.”

For more on Kinnie Starr, her brand new album and live shows including appearances on The Blue Dot Tour, visit kinniestarr.ca or follow on Twitter @kinniestarr. Passionate about environmentalism and water preservation, Starr would recommend like-minded people to view the film trailer for Caleb Behn’s project Fractured Land. Visit fracturedland.com for more information.

And for more of the latest music news, interviews and album previews, follow this column on Twitter @fsu_bobbyisms. Shoutout to @gregmarini for his recent recommendations of Number One Gun and Cut Copy; I’m always on the lookout for new music, recommend something to me on Twitter and I’ll print your name too. I’m out of words.