Cat Martino is the Brooklyn-based artist behind the electronic project Stranger Cat. Stranger Cat’s new record, Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body In Pieces, is out now.
(Photo Credit: Dima Cherniak)
Cat Martino is the Brooklyn-based artist behind the electronic project Stranger Cat; Sondre Lerche is a singer-songwriter and author based in Norway. Stranger Cat’s new record, Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body In Pieces, is out now, so to celebrate, the friends got on a Zoom call to catch up about a shared love of theirs — Joni Mitchell — and much more.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Cat Martino: I just released the new album.
Sondre Lerche: So it’s out! Amazing.
Cat: It’s out! It’s released from my soul. [Laughs.] It was one of these ones that just took forever. It took almost three years, and then [with the] the pandemic and then I moved and the lack of funding for the arts here… I almost thought, Oh, I’m not going to put this out, because I just can’t deal with it as an independent. And I’m really happy I forged forward. It’s so important to honor all the stages of ourselves as humans and artists. I definitely feel a weight lifted. And I really wanted to make this a visual album, so I’m really happy with the video art that I made.
Sondre: Yeah. That’s a lot of work — you know, it’s not just the writing and recording of a record, it is conceptualizing and making all these visual interpretations of work. Which is a really fun thing to do, but so much work.
Cat: It’s so much work. I remember when I made my first music video, I was like, “How do people make whole movies? Because these three minutes just took my entire life up.” And people don’t watch music videos as much anymore, but who cares? It’s not about any of that.
Sondre: Exactly.
Cat: It’s about what I have to do as an artist, and what I have to say as someone who’s been a mover and a dancer my whole life. The album’s called Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body In Pieces, and I don’t know if you remember, but I had some serious injuries for a couple of years, debilitating health issues that really kept me immobile. So making the video art really helped. Each of the songs were made when I was totally immobile, and then creating this movement album, just exploring both sides of the coin and this joy of moving — I had to do it.
Sondre: You had to do it. But then also, that visual component is part of the piece itself. Because like you said, who watches music videos? They’re out there, but it’s more about your chance to complete the piece with something that you release from yourself. It’s like when people ask me, “Why don’t you just put out one song here? Why do you make albums?” I know people can listen to one song, but it’s my one chance to make the context for the work, to make the album and make a visual representation in photos or the artwork. And we’ve come to terms with the fact that we send it out into the world and it’s pulled apart, turned into pieces. But it’s like our one gallery showing of the work, where it’s all hanging on the walls here and we control the narrative. Then you have to let go. But it’s very meaningful. It may be hard for people who don’t make art to understand.
Cat: It may be hard for people who aren’t obsessive about their creations.
Sondre: [Laughs.] Yes, exactly.
Cat: It’s such a passionate process. You’re right. I feel like in the past few years, I’ve really started identifying more as a multimedia artist. I make light sculptures now, too, and it’s really important. It’s just something that happened naturally, having all these layers to the work — the physical, the visual. It’s almost symbiotic. But then again, somebody can lie down with their headphones and just experience the song alone.
Sondre: Yeah, exactly. And speaking of visual components, obviously Joni — her visual work as a painter is extraordinary in its own self, but has informed so many of her albums [too], the album covers especially. They’re magical and iconic already because it’s so thoroughly hers, and physically handmade in a sense.
Cat: Yes. The topic and both of our passion on it is so broad that it’s like, where do you even start. But I do feel that for me, this “painting with sound” thing that I read about her when I was maybe 16, gave me so much permission. Because I was singing in a band with some guys in high school that were trained as jazz guitarists and had a lot of years of music lessons — and I had piano lessons and I understood music theory, but I felt like I didn’t know all these weird chords. You know, [my bandmate] was writing songs in time signatures of 13, and I felt like I wasn’t a songwriter because I didn’t have those skills. And then actually, the same person, I went over his house and his parents were these total hippies and they had this epic record collection. He said, “Have you ever heard Joni Mitchell?” And I hadn’t. My parents just weren’t that cool. [Laughs.] So he put on a record and instantly — I can remember the moment — he put on Court and Spark. That was my first introduction, and then I remember just trying to find out more about her. I read this interview where she said she hadn’t been a trained guitar player, and that was the key thing for me. She was using her ears, and that she was using her body to “paint with sound.” All of a sudden, the floodgates opened and I had all this permission. I thought, Oh, I don’t need that training that these others had.
Sondre: Yeah. You imagine when she talked about that, it was unheard of. She couldn’t have realized the weight of those words, that it’s totally fine that you don’t know these time signatures and the names of these chords and these tunings; it is about what you feel and about breaking down the limitations that you put up upon yourself, and society [puts upon you]. She didn’t give a fuck about that.
Cat: And that was part of the conversation that I initially wanted to have with you — let’s talk about Joni as an innovator. She was constantly seeking in that way. And for me, it comes full circle when we talk about the record that I just put out, because it’s the first one that I really got to explore the kind of sound design that I was hearing in my ears. I really felt like I was painting with sound. And it’s funny because I wasn’t thinking about Joni Mitchell and how deeply she influenced me during that creation. For me, it was special because I was making the record during this immobilized, limited period so I could find this movement with the sound, and I don’t think I would have found any of that without her.
I have this theory that if Joni was coming up now, she would be more into sound design. Like, who would Joni be now? What would she sound like? Can we even imagine what she would sound like if she was 22 in 2022?
Sondre: I think it’s almost naive to think that she would be an acoustic singer-songwriter just plugging away at a coffee house. It wouldn’t be that way, because she was so modern, even when she when she started out, and she was always defying expectations. Whenever she was pigeonholed and people said, “You are that, you’re this, you represent this” — I think that just provoked her and propelled her to want to move on. She was sort of daring the world to say who she was, and then, “Oh, I’ll show you! Maybe I can be this, but I’m also this, and I’m also that.” And of course, she came to music in a time of really explosive technological innovations. You know, you talk about Bob Dylan going electric, but really Joni Mitchell going electric — that’s a pretty earth shattering moment when she really starts playing electric after Court and Spark, and she starts exploring jazz. She starts hanging out with a whole different set of musicians than the people who she came up with in the folk scene. She clearly also articulated that she did not want to be seen as a “confessional singer,” whatever that was, because it limits you to this one thing.
I think she felt also that being a part of a set or a group of people also limits you to always have to answer to the collective. I really, really relate to that in everything she does, that she is someone who is like, “I don’t want to be part of this scene or this group.” Not because I don’t like the music necessarily, it just gives me a headache. I need to be free. It’s the quest for freedom in music, always. And then the quest for innovation in how she made that music and the instruments she played and the new sounds she explored throughout the ‘70s and into the ‘80s. Also, of course, in the ‘80s people like her had a hard time. I think she made some beautiful, really searching and innovative records in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Like in the ‘90s, she was playing all these weird electric keyboard guitars and omnichords and experimenting with whole different sounds. So I think she was always searching for the kinds of songs and sounds that you wouldn’t expect, and that wouldn’t limit you to being just Joni Mitchell, you know?
Cat: Yeah, just when you think that you know — like, “OK, now Joni does jazz. Now she does this, now she does that” — always blowing the lid off expectation. And not necessarily just to do that; it’s because that’s who she was as an artist, just always seeking.
Sondre: Yeah. I think it just takes so much to keep someone like her engaged. She just has to get into the deep water, always. I can only imagine she’s so easily bored. [Laughs.] And I think that’s a testament to her her guitar tunings as well. Like, I can’t even wrap my head around what it means that every song has its own tuning. I would immediately just be thinking, That’s going to give you such a headache when you play the songs. She’s not even considering that, because it just has to be. I think it just keeps her mind stimulated, and her thought process is so advanced with how she looks at the world and how she writes about it, that it just takes so much stimulation to keep her engaged. I think it’s a whole different level.
Cat: It’s almost like she needed all these different palettes. So, what if you only have purple but you want lavender? Well, then you’re going to make your own mix to get your exact shade. And that’s exactly what she was doing with these tunings and the orchestral instruments and other sounds. She was doing everything in the studio that was possible at that time of the makings of those records. So again, it leads me to believe when more things became available, that if she was coming up now that she would be a producer who’s really exploring all these different painting-with-sounds elements. It reminds me of this quote I heard recently from the producer SOPHIE — I saw this great clip online where SOPHIE was saying, “Well, as an artist, you always want to use all the powerful tools available to you.”
Sondre: Yeah, whatever it is.
Cat: Yes. Like, why wouldn’t you long to use all the sounds that you can imagine in your brain and that are available to us now? And it’s interesting, because I remember when I started to really shapeshift from doing songwriter music that was based on a piano or a guitar, I almost felt like certain people in songwriter circles were like, “Oh, well, she’s not really a songwriter anymore.” And I thought, that’s so silly because each of these songs really can be broken down to a piano. They’re still songs. I love exploring things that are more experimental in my work, but especially on this record, they’re all songs.
Sondre: Exactly. And that’s the thing — I think some people maybe can’t hear a sort of experimental recording of a song, and also remember that it is a song. Because once they hear signifiers that are beyond a guitar or piano or the sort of traditional, classic contemporary songwriting, they feel maybe out of depth or scared. But Joni never stopped writing songs. You know, Björk still writes songs.
Cat: Exactly.
Sondre: The terrain around her is maybe more exploratory, or what some people say is nontraditional, but they’re always songs. I feel that’s why people like Björk and Prince were obviously so influenced by Joni — they saw her for her all-encompassing greatness.
Obviously now, she’s an older lady who it takes a lot to impress. I don’t get the sense that she’s paying that much attention to contemporary music. She wrote a bunch of great songs in the ‘90s where she was talking about the typical, “everything is bad today, everything’s getting worse,” and I do believe that’s maybe a privilege that she’s earned. But I do believe that she would find a lot of kinship in the more progressive modern thinkers of music. Obviously she always identified with Miles Davis, and I understand what she means in a way, that she’s on that level. This is something I love about Joni: she was never one to go for modesty. She challenged herself so greatly, but she was not someone to take bullshit. She knew her worth. And even in times when the culture did not make room for her anymore, or when the culture wanted her to be her own sort of tribute act and do the ‘60s and ‘70s stuff, she insisted on her art. And I think time now has proven that so much of her work in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and even the 2000s, is on par with the culture-defining stuff from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I love that she was unapologetic. She didn’t suffer fools, and she doesn’t suffer fools, gladly. Because she knows the level she’s at.
Cat: Absolutely. Do you have a favorite song or album?
Sondre: It’s very hard. It’s funny you mentioned Court and Spark, because that was the first album that I got into of hers when I was 18. At the time, that was sort of all I took in, because I wasn’t so interested in the earlier stuff, and I wasn’t mature enough in my mind to grasp the later stuff. So it took many, many years. It was not until, like, 2015 that I just suddenly felt a hunger to hear Joni Mitchell’s albums from the ‘90s. I remembered the cover for Night Ride Home from ‘91 — I just remembered as a kid seeing that at the record store. And I had never heard it, but I obviously know now that that’s Joni, and I just felt this strange thing where I was like, I want to hear what’s behind that cover. I started listening to Night Ride Home, and that’s when I just — boom. This was the music I needed to hear at the moment. And to think that it had been there all along! That album had been in the world for almost 25 years at that point, but I just hadn’t been ready, and maybe I hadn’t needed it. So I went pretty hard into Night Ride Home, obviously, and to Turbulent Indigo, Taming the Tiger. Then I started going backwards — Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm and Dog Eat Dog, and so forth.
Cat: This is so fascinating, because you’re naming all the albums that I’m less familiar with. [Laughs.]
Sondre: Yeah, exactly! I just became really enamored with all of these. I was a part of this great tribute here in Norway, with some of the greatest young jazz musicians in Norway and a few singers. I was invited to be one of the singers. Actually, I lied — I heard about it, and I went to the musical director and I said, “Hey, do you guys need a fourth singer? Because I have a feeling that maybe you don’t yet have somebody to cover the ‘80s and the ‘90s Joni. But I’m your guy.” [Laughs.]
Cat: Yes!
Sondre: And she was like, “Yep, actually, we need that covered.” So I did “Night Ride Home,” I did “Sire of Sorrow” from Turbulent Indigo. And when I saw Joni in LA a little over a month ago at the Hollywood Bowl, she did “Sire of Sorrow,” and then she did “Night Ride Home.” So she did my two favorite songs. It was just magical. So, yeah, I feel a really, really strong connection with the ‘80s. I feel it’s the sort of taken-for-granted phase of Joni’s career. I think more and more people are discovering it now. And then, of course, at the same time I’m going further back in time and having new appreciation for Hissing of Summer Lawns and obviously Hejira. Which maybe Hejira is her absolute classic, and it’s such an incredible album.
Cat: It is so amazing. Everybody talks about Blue — which like, we should never, ever stop talking about because it is an absolutely perfect album from beginning to end. But, you know, I think it’s so obvious how perfectly amazing it is.
Sondre: Yeah, exactly.
Cat: I will never get over the line, “I drew a map of Canada with your face sketched on it.” When I teach songwriting to kids, that is always the example of, how you can tell the most personal detail, and the more deeply personal you get, the more universal it is and everyone can relate to it. Her songs are so full of that.
Sondre: I’ve been going back to the new archival thing that they put out with her demos — it’s lots of songs from the Hejira era, and from the next one, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter — and they are the best demos I’ve ever heard. Everything is there in her performance, and the lyrics just come through. If you want to hear the other end of the idea of painting with sound and exploring whatever is available — if you want to really see why she is also the best songwriter of her generation — listen to her demos for Hejira, because it’s just one person and a guitar and it is so brilliant and the lyrics come through in whole new ways. It’s so, so good. It is really a masterclass in simplicity and brilliance.
Cat: Has anyone touched touched her songwriting since? Is there anyone?
Sondre: I don’t think so.
Cat: I don’t think so either.
Sondre: Which I think that’s totally natural. I don’t think that’s saying that things suck now — there’s so much talent. But someone like her is so once in a century. And that’s fine.
Cat: I’m in total agreeance. Everyone is so, “Bob Dylan!” But what she gave me — she smashed the forms.
Sondre: It’s just absolute freedom.
(Photo Credit: Dima Cherniak)
