When Erin McKeown set out to make her most recent studio album, she decided to record the new songs in a city that embodied the same spirit of “hope in a sad environment.” It was New Orleans that she had in mind, even though this was December 2004, long before the hurricane.
“New Orleans, obviously now, but I think always has had a quality of mixing sadness with joy,” McKeown says. “That's what I wanted to bring to my record.” At the time she was getting through a break-up and writing songs that reflected “a combination of overwhelming sadness and true belief that things were going to get better.”
The result is We Will Become Like Birds, an album that showcases her distinctive vocals soaring through songs that share references, both forthright and obscure, to being airborne. McKeown says this kind of thematic cohesion was new terrain for her.
“In the past I've done all these records that bounce around from one genre to the next,” she says, “and I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I went for depth instead of variety.” She says wanted to challenge herself to get her mind to stand still for 12 songs.
“I'm a person who's full of ideas, for better or for worse, and they don't always turn into something.” This time she says she wanted to see things through before moving onto something else. In a song titled “Air” she sings: “What I lack in guts and blood I make up for in dreams.”
McKeown may be a dreamer, but she displays guts and gusto in her frequent live performances. She tours at least half of the year and her shows exhibit her playful energy—a verve backed by solid talent.
At 28 she has already released five full-length albums: Monday Morning Cold (1998), Distillation (2000), Grand and Born to Hum (2003), and We Will Become Like Birds (2005). Earlier this year she released an EP of songs recorded live for an L.A. radio show.
At the start of her career McKeown and three other female indie artists teamed up as Voices on the Verge, touring and recording one live album. But that project came to an end in 2001. “People ask about it all the time and I'm glad about that,” McKeown says. “But I'm also glad to move on to other things.”
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