Marlaena Moore

Interview by Sienna Edwards

Photography and Editing by Sam Li

Text Edited by Alex Kasel

Marlaena Moore’s Magic

What are your favourite lyrics you’ve ever written?
I hold on to lyrics that continually feel like affirmations in some way. There are two that I still really appreciate, that resonate, and are usually ones that I still need to hear every once in a while. I have this song, “Future Love,” from my album, Gaze, and there's a line that goes “Yes, I will be unlovable to some, my future love belongs to someone good,” and I think it's a constant reminder of never settling for something that doesn't feel 100% correct in your heart, and being okay with people not getting you, and wanting everything that you are about. It's my one plea to people who are inexperienced or younger in love. A thing that I didn't understand for a really long time, and gets really misconstrued, is that it’s worth holding out for something that is 100% right in your heart.
Then very recently, I wrote a song called “Pacer” that I released last year that was born out of a window of total self acceptance. There's a line in it that goes “I will never be good enough, that's such a great relief.” I think there's something in me that really wrestles with wanting to be better. But then also, the push and pull of not fully accepting who you are as a person will just ultimately always leave you unsatisfied.
So yes, there is absolutely a distorted Stepford version of myself that exists in some wacky alternate reality that is always washed and clean and has a clean house, cooks dinner, and does a million things and succeeds in all the ways that she wants to, but that is such a unfair expectation for this realm. So, to me, it's good to hear that line when I’m singing it because the pressure is off. “This is what you are right now, and probably what you will continue to be for the rest of your life, so you can relax. It's easy street, kiddo.”

What’s your song writing process usually like and has it evolved over time?
I think it has evolved. When I was really young, I thought that songwriting came from pure magic, where you get hit with a lightning rod. You're like, “inspiration has come and we have granted you a song.” So then, I would go through tantrums when I was writing songs that I didn't fully feel were good enough. I think my songwriting really changed when I did Pay Attention, Be Amazed because it was just work. It was me going: “I'm going to do songwriting like I'm working at a job, and I'm going to remove the celestial, existential expectation on it. I'm going to just work on things until I think they're good.”
In terms of my process now, I feel mostly w hat I do is just kind of squirrel away at little ideas. Anytime I think of a line, I'll come to a point where I'm open to put way less pressure on myself. I just kind of present like; “Okay, I'm open to being really creative right now.” I think when you're trying to force that spark, it will only let you down. I also find that when I get caught by something that I want to do that's not necessarily songwriting – like improv comedy, I do sketches – or if I'm just putting a playlist together, putting outfits together, or just trying to do a collage – [its] just catching little waves of little creative spurts that don't have any pressure on them. I feel like that's always also a good time for songwriting, because it just means that you're just wanting to be a pure creative space. There's no ulterior motive.

Does improv inform the way you perform at all? Have you learned anything from acting or comedy that you use in your music?
100%! Improv has really helped me take things less seriously. [To] just to be willing to be like: “oh, I want to make this fun for myself.” When I go on stage, I want it to be fun for me all the time. With improv, you have nothing to lose because you're just making it up on the spot. Also, recently I was writing and I did an experiment where I was just like, “okay, if I was just gonna improvise a song right now what would that be?” So that's also helped with songwriting. I think it's fully resuscitated my playfulness that is an essential part to who I am. Anytime I’ve tried to be a serious artist, it’s always not quite it. I like things to be meaningful, but I think even in some of my darker songs that I present to the world, there is still something that's sort of winking and playful. So I think with improv, it's helped me take things less seriously, which has been really rewarding, and it's also nice to ease the pressure off of having a creative outlet that is pure spontaneity – there's no proof of it, it won’t exist again. Generally, where I perform [the performances] exist in very small spaces, too.
I think that's another thing that improv has helped with – thinking about being with the audience as a collective space, so it's not you vs. them, it's like we're here together. When I was in Calgary, I played a show at Sled where I just burst into tears on stage because I was getting really overcome, and I was like, “there's no stopping this train.” I was either like, “Okay, I need to get off the stage, or I have to actually acknowledge that this is happening.” I think nothing will connect you more to an audience than really naming what is there. It might be one person on stage, or a band, but somehow it just feels like we're all together in the space. It's so beautiful, people being connected through that is really important to me. When you’re performing and you’re thinking of it, it’s not me performing or talking at people, it's “I want to thread this needle so we're all kind of stitched together. I want us to share this together.” There’s nothing more stunning than that.

Your songs seem very personal to your life, I’m wondering if you draw from any fictional stories or made-up scenarios as well when writing your music?
I think that, for the most part, it is all very personal because I'm always really inspired by trying to untangle things that I'm going through. I get presented with a lot of very contradictory feelings, and so I tend to talk very abstractly. I'm not super great at nailing something down in a very simple way. This is why I started songwriting in the beginning, I was trying to untangle webs. I wrote a song called “24 Hour Drugstore” that I was originally thinking I wanted to be a Christmas song, because it's about someone who got left on Christmas Eve, just this person wandering through a Shoppers. I want to experiment more with that because it seems like it's very fertile ground, and I always really admire people who tell interesting stories with songwriting, that’s tradition. None of my songs really have a strong narrative, it's a lot of little ideas patchworked together.
[Talking about song “Love As Is”]
“Yeah I’ve been branded as an antique One of a kind, hard-to-find rarity I look good in your kitchen next to a picture of your family”
That was also kind of a strange one for me, because that one is also kind of loose fiction. But also, I guess whenever I add things from the songwriter perspective that have not literally happened, I guess that is fiction – but then, it's also like, “well, I felt this way.”

What does love and longing mean to you and how does it inform your songwriting?
So, love and longing are two very separate things for me. I think of love as a mass of energy to be inside of, and it’s a verb, as they say. I think that love is always correct. I think love is something that gets mistaken for a lot of other things. Love and longing get mistaken for each other, love and lust get mistaken for each other. Our sweet little well-meaning brains and hearts really get it confused a lot of the time, because it is this form that can be molded into things. Longing has been fascinating so much because we long for people, or we long for specific things. It's kind of like Scooby Doo, where you pull the mask off the guy and you're like, “oh, it's actually this! I think that I want this person, but it's actually this very specific feeling!” So dissecting that is very fascinating to me.
I honestly feel like most of my songs are like broadway “I Want” songs. They kind of all are, in some ways, “Somewhere That's Green,” because I think that longing is so confusing. It's the musical theater expression “when I cannot speak, I must sing.” When I heard that for the first time, I was like “that explains it!” When I think about love and how it informs songwriting – it's just energy pulsating through everything that is true. If I’m writing a song and I'm being sincere, love is there. It has to be there, or it feels false.

Since you’re not originally from Montreal, how was forming a music community in the city and getting into the scene?
It was something that I got really lucky with. My original drummer, who I did my first ever tour with, moved out here and he was waiting for me to come, and I told him I would never move to Montréal. The reason why I came here, specifically, is that my partner, who I also work creatively with, had a studio out here. It was originally a little daunting, and in some ways, it's still kind of daunting because I'm at the point where I'm no longer the new girl in town — but I'm still pretty new here. I'm still kind of figuring my way around. It's amazing, people are so welcoming. I also had the fortune of touring and knowing people a little bit beforehand. I feel very lucky that I was welcomed with open arms.

What about Montréal makes it a special place for music?
I think the thing with Montréal is that it has all of the amenities of a big city and has no short supply of talent, but also Montréal has the vibe of like, “no pressure, let's just make things that are cool.” That spans all across all mediums, so it's a really good energy for creating stuff. That was originally why I wanted to move [here]. I was debating between going here or to Toronto, and I love Toronto, I sincerely do, and maybe in the future I will live there, who knows. But one thing I realized was that I would have a little bit more freedom, I would put less pressure on myself here, and that is the energy I need to make things. The thing with Toronto is that, when people make good music there, it is incredible, but I think that people can succumb to the “gotta make it” energy, because it's just down the street for them. That can really disrupt the creative process, it can kind of suck you in. I know myself well enough where I get sucked into that stuff sometimes. So, Montreal felt like a place where everyone is so chill. There's no pressure.

Do you have any new music coming up?
I have an album that is fully done, and at the time of this interview – no official release date. But, I do expect – and pray to God – that it comes out next year (2024).