by Mo Schweiger
Four years after the release of Skulls Example, Dear Nora is back. I spoke with the band’s vocalist, Katy Davidson, about their latest, and self-proclaimed best album, human futures, released on October 28th, 2022. human futures delivers searing social critique punctuated by synth leads and buffered by Davidson’s characteristic reverence for the everyday. The result is an album that balances the internal and external and satisfies a listener both musically and emotionally. Davidson and I spoke about making art during times of social and political tumult, the changing state of the music industry throughout their expansive career, and Lady Gaga.
credit: Leslie Lechner
MS: Can you tell me about the process of making Human Futures?
KD: Yeah, I had some songs halfway written from 2018 and 2019 -- most of which I didn't finish and that just went to back of mind while I went about the rest of my life. I didn’t pick them back up right away during the pandemic, but toward early 2022 I started to feel pretty inspired, especially lyrically, by all of the things that had been unearthed during the pandemic. It was kind of good that a lot of the music had already been written because a lot of those songs only needed lyrics. Once I could start putting lyrics to the songs, things started congealing. The other big element to making human futures was that I actually got my band all together in a studio and we co-wrote a lot of music in-person.
MS: What was it like, to come together and write together?
KD: It was wild! It was right during the first Omicron wave so even just getting together in LA, which is no more than a two-and-a-half-hour flight for any band member, still felt semi-harrowing. Once we ripped that Band-Aid off and had a band dinner together it all felt a little surreal, but we dove in. It was instantly pretty inspiring and fun -- it felt very kinetic to have everyone in the same room.
MS: I can imagine! What were some of the things at the forefront of your and everyone’s minds as you were laying down the initial parts of the album?
KD: From a musical perspective, I didn’t want to think too much about it. I just wanted to see where we gravitated naturally. We all have a lot of cross-over interests with our music, but we also don’t which makes for some interesting tensions. I didn’t want to be prescriptive at all with the way things were going to go in the studio. In fact, the first day we decided to completely write original stuff. Three of those songs ended up on the album from that very first day of writing in-person.
MS: Out of curiosity, which ones?
KD: “scrolls of doom,” “sedona,” and “fruitful streams.” In terms of making a song where a song didn’t previously exist in any form, those three came to be in the studio. The rest I had at least some kind of start on somewhere.
MS: Very cool! I read in the essay that you published before the album came out that you feel like it’s your best work yet – I don’t disagree at all, but I’m curious what about it makes you feel that way?
KD: I definitely do think that. When I wrote that essay I was trying to be a little bit tongue-and-cheek provocative just to make it be fun to read but I also stand by what I said. I think that this album feels the tightest. For most of my albums I can think of at least one song that I would have removed. Maybe not Mountain Rock, it’s pretty tight. But even when an album’s done and I really like it and/or love it, there are still lingering feelings of “Oh, I kind of wish we did that differently” or “That song probably didn’t need to go on there.” I never had that with this one. It’s a tight package, the songs are very thematically linked, they speak to each other, they speak to the songs on Skulls Example. It’s definitely answering questions that Skulls Example posed. Musically, I think it’s interesting, engaging, fun, a little strange but also pleasing and melodic in interesting ways. I think in terms of thinking about the big picture or package, those things all really line up for me.
MS: That definitely comes across, I’ve really enjoyed spending time with it.
KD: Thank you! I’m really happy with it.
MS: I can definitely feel how it’s speaking to your last album, but also it feels really different from it both musically and lyrically. I’m wondering if was that an intentional shift or if that happened naturally?
KD: It just kind of happened. I don't want to go into making an album or recording having an idea of how I exactly want it to go. I just wanted to keep it really fresh and have the inspiration flow moment to moment even though it sounds cliché. It’s maybe even glib to say this, but I wanted the process to be fun. The pandemic was a slog! Everyone had a different experience on some level, but my personal experience of the pandemic was that it was long, depressing, limiting, repressive, and sort of soul shattering. I was just like “let’s have fun!” and collaborate in ways that we haven’t before because I need other people right now. That’s where that all came from – as a response to not being able to see my people or be with my people.
MS: Totally, and I think that human futures is clearly situated in the pandemic and in the feelings it brought up. I’m curious what it means to you to make work that’s responding to a specific point in time and set of events – or even if that’s something you were trying to do intentionally?
KD: I wasn’t trying to do that but think I just do it naturally. I’m as disengaged as any person because of all of the technological shit that’s flying in our faces all of the time, but I do feel like I have some level of being present with what’s going on in our world – not just what's going on in the news, but what's going on in the town I live in and what's going on culturally with my extended group of artist friends, etc., etc. But yeah, not conscious, just sort of natural. I think that it was like that on Skulls Example as well.
MS: I’m thinking about a poetry reading I went to a little while ago with the poets Franny Choi and Ocean Vuong. They were talking about how the art world demands timelessness of us but that that’s actually not possible and that making art about how you’re feeling in a particular moment is just human and that humanity is actually what’s timeless.
KD: I like that!
MS: Yeah, they said something else really interesting, too. In talking about the idea of timelessness, they were saying that, if you think about the natural world, the things that decay and are fleeting are actually the things that are natural and can flow back into the universe whereas the things that are “timeless” and last forever are unnatural things like plastic that are never going to go away. All to say that timelessness shouldn’t be the goal and that it actually makes you part of the universe to make things that are…
KD: Ephemeral
MS: Exactly
KD: That’s so interesting, I don’t know that I totally agree. I love that conceptually, but to me – I wish I could be in conversation with them right in the moment! Because I want to say that there are some timeless things that are really interesting like relationships with one’s loved ones and the relationship between a parent and a child or things like love and fear. But I love thinking about those things being plastic [laughs] like putting those incredibly epic, interesting, and deep timeless things in the same bucket as plastic is kind of amazing.
MS: Totally! How did it feel to tour this album?
KD: It was very fun, very exhausting, but pretty exhilarating. The shows were all pretty crowded – we sold out a few of them. There’s no place we showed up, and were like “oh, this is a dud, why did we come here?” Every place had sweet fans show up, most of whom knew the lyrics to even the new songs. Just like how good the band felt when we got to record after being home for so long, being able to travel around together after so long lets you experience it in a new way. We’ve all changed but we’re all the same. It was an interesting experience to be out together and deepen our friendship as a band. We felt a lot of gratitude because people really showed up for us and that was pretty awesome.
MS: At least from what I saw totally paid off. I had a really wonderful time [at the show in Greenfield, MA]. Beforehand everyone was like “I'm not even going to make plans to go to the show with anyone, I’m just going to go and see everyone I know” and that’s what happened.
KD: That’s awesome.
MS: Yeah, it was a great community moment. You’ve been in the music industry for a quite some time, I’m wondering how it has changed throughout your career and if that’s affected this album in any way?
KD: I’m sure it’s affected it in a bunch of ways. I booked my first tour by calling people on landlines [laughs]. Streaming has made things better and worse in maybe equal amounts. I’m not going to be a judge and hold up my gavel and say “it’s right or wrong” – there’s good and bad that has come from the landscape that we’re in now. If streaming is helping people hear our album in far flung places where they wouldn’t have otherwise, that’s a cool aspect of it that we appreciate, but aside from that I could write a thesis on what’s wrong with it and we all know, you don’t even need me to say it. It’s complicated.
MS: I can imagine. Clearly your work has been an inspiration to indie artists today and feels really contemporary with what’s happening in music today which shows your influence. Frankie Cosmos is, in my mind, a really integral part of the generation of artists who benefitted from listening to your music and being influenced by it – I’m wondering what it was like to then work with them on a song for this album?
KD: I totally agree on some level that my instance in some specific cases has influenced people, but maybe it’s more like the very late nineties and early aughts style has influenced people. I have no idea if Greta [of Frankie Cosmos] listened to my music before, she probably just had an awareness of the music that was happening back then.
MS: That’s fair
KD: On a personal level, we got to make buddies because we did some shows together at the end of 2019. To me that was the real catalyst. We have a pretty broad age difference but we’re just hanging out, it’s fun. This collaboration happened because we had been continuing the good vibes from that tour, but we were locked down the following spring. I texted Greta and was like “hey, this might be a long shot, but if you have any unfinished songs you want me to take a look at send them my way, or maybe we could try to cowrite something?” assuming that the answer would be no, but she sent me a handful. I was like “this is so cool!” and [“flag (into the fray)”] was the one that really stuck and made the most sense as a collaboration. It was really quick! The beginning part of the song is what she sent me, and I just continued it from there. It was a brief, fun, long distance collaboration that was both of us responding to what we were all going through. Now we’re total buddies and I feel very grateful for that.
MS: That’s great! The last thing I have to ask you is: at the beginning of “flowers fading” you say “woke up from a dream about Lady Gaga” – do you remember what happened in your dream about Lady Gaga?
KD: [laughs] God I really wish I did! I don’t actually – I wonder if I kept a journal back then, it would be cool if I could find that. I really wish I could tell you but it is literal -- I did have a dream about her but I sadly cannot remember any details to share with you.
MS: That’s super fair, dreams are often like that!
KD: It was the beginning of the pandemic – weren’t people having crazy dreams during the pandemic?
MS: I definitely was!