The Montreal-based transgender indie/electro experimentalist just released their sixth album, I Can’t Keep All Of Our Secrets — an emotional electro pop exploration of grief and loss inspired by the death of a friend. Musically, it’s the former Calgary country crooner’s most electronic offering to date, a dance-floor friendly collage of heavily programmed production, analog synths and distorted electric guitars.
In addition to promoting what is arguably their best album yet, Spoon will also be publishing their first book, First Spring Grassfire — a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical account of growing up trans in Alberta — in the fall, and the National Film Board has a documentary about the fascinating artist in the works.
Spoon has also been a vocal advocate for gender-neutral pronouns as of late. Early in 2012, they posted an open letter to Toronto-based gay publication, Xtra, in response to the backlash the magazine received after refusing to use “they,” the preferred pronoun of transgender visual artist Elisha Lim. It was a subject that hit home for Spoon, who struggled to come out as ‘he’ in the early 2000s; editors claimed it was confusing for readers to hear Spoon’s high voice and then see a male pronoun. “I was 22. I needed the press so I didn’t protest the way my identity was being treated,” Spoon wrote in the letter. (Like Lim, the musician now prefers to go by the gender-neutral “they.”)
It’s a great little interview, & a lovely track. Do get check out Amazon’s Rae Spoon offerings