For Aidan Knight, Songwriting Is An “Unpacking of Childhood Musical Repression”

By Aidan Knight’s own estimate, he’s spent more time on the road than at home over the last decade. But now, as the Victoria, BC singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer gears up to release his self-titled fourth album during a pandemic, that ratio is sure to change. 

“To release a record during all this COVID stuff feels very different than releasing a regular record,” Knight tells American Songwriter in an interview featured below. “On the horizon there’s not really a chance to tour it currently, ‘cause our whole country is definitely locked down until next year for venues and musicians.”

Still, there’s something fitting about Knight releasing his new record from home, as the record took shape in his living rooms—first in Berlin, then in Victoria.

“My original goal was just to record a little bit of something to have a few songs to show [my partner] Julia when she would come home from work,” says Knight of the record, which follows 2016’s Each Other, 2012’s Small Reveal, and 2010’s Versicolour. “I just recorded a couple things in our living room. I had a little drum kit set up there and some monitors in the corner. I would record like three different musical ideas and play them for her and some of those things didn’t really end up making the final cut, but some of them ended up being expanded out into full song ideas.”

Knight’s new single, “Veni Vidi Vici,” was one of the few songs on the record that didn’t originate that way. Rather, he built the tune around a guitar part that he lifted from another project and a David Axelrod-inspired drum part. What starts out as a lackadaisical folk-pop bop transforms into something restless and heady. “I’ve found it’s never healthy to be something that you’re not,” Knight sings in the track. “I’d never really written a lyric that direct before,” he comments. “It made me laugh when I was writing it, so it had to stick.”

We spoke to Knight by phone last week about “Veni Vidi Vici,” moving from Victoria to Berlin and back again, and his philosophy of songwriting, which he calls “an unpacking of childhood musical repression.” Check out the full interview and watch Knight’s new “Veni Vidi Vici” video below.

American Songwriter: How’d the making of your new record compare to the making of the last few? Why is this one—your fourth—self-titled?

Aidan Knight: Well I’ve always made music with other folks, and that’s always been a really gratifying experience. As they say, music is the universal language, so it’s good to speak it with other people.

Through some chance circumstances I ended up recording most of the record by myself and I played most of the instruments. I don’t know why it’s self-titled other than there wasn’t a title that became apparent to me, and it seemed like a good opportunity to make another first impression. 

To release a record during all this COVID stuff feels very different than releasing a regular record. On the horizon there’s not really a chance to tour it currently, ‘cause our whole country is definitely locked down until next year for venues and musicians. To answer the question when I started making it and what was different between this one and the last couple records, it just felt like I could get to where I wanted to be—what I wanted to express and how I wanted it to sound—much easier than trying to rope in a producer and an engineer and a new band and all this stuff.

The guys that I’ve been playing with for the past ten years are all off doing either other careers or doing other music or they’ve started families. Being in your mid-thirties is a very different experience than being in your mid-twenties, obviously. And I’m imagining that I’ll probably make lots of different kinds of records with lots of different kinds of lineups. I wish that I had a more philosophical or spiritual reason for why I wanted to make it on my own, but sometimes it’s a technical thing too.

You’ve said this record is about “Domestic bliss, unrelenting loneliness, death, love, taxing the rich, new life, the splendour of nature, renovating the basement, misunderstanding your parents, gender, body negativity – Y’know, stuff that sells.” When did you write these songs?

I started towards the end of touring for Each Other, which is my last record. My partner Julie and I were temporarily living in Berlin and trying to make a shot at living in a very different place from Victoria, where we had spent eight or nine years. I started writing in a couple different apartments — we had a couple different apartments there — but not recording yet. Then we needed to come back home to be closer to family, so we made the move back to Canada within the first 18 months of making the big move out of Canada.

We ended up back in our old place that we had lived for the past eight years, and we started recording. My original goal was just to record a little bit of something to have a few songs to show Julia when she would come home from work. I just recorded a couple things in our living room. I had a little drum kit set up there and some monitors in the corner. I would record like three different musical ideas and play them for her and some of those things didn’t really end up making the final cut, but some of them ended up being expanded out into full song ideas. It was an interesting way for me to work through writing a lot of the songs.

A few song ideas were started in Berlin, and a couple songs that unfortunately didn’t make the final cut I’m hoping will come out later. The songwriting process was just this shortened version of my normal process, which is I write a song idea, then I bring it to some other players and they can add what their general impression is and that changes it a lot. Whereas this time it was very terrifying to be self-directed. You have to justify every choice that you make, every lyric, every melody.

What are some of the things that you were listening to during that period? 

A lot of the time I end up turning off the record player for a year or two while I’m working on things because I get so influenced. I’m already very influenced by a lot of music, particularly on this record a lot of stuff from when I was younger. I was listening to Arthur Russell and Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson—a lot of piano music. It had nothing to do with my songwriting process but it’s a good blank slate because it’s not lyrical and that helps me forge my own [path]. 

I have this general philosophy of songwriting, and I find it interesting to listen to other songwriters talk about their process, particularly who their influences are. I think as much as the public would love to believe that [songwriting] comes from this place of nowhere—a lightning bolt of creativity, this thing that we’re drawing down from the sky—I find it’s more of an unpacking of childhood musical repression and things that I’ve heard like commercials on TV and the Jurassic Park theme song and melodies that get stuck in your head and then you end up destroying them and rearranging the notes into something you think is new, and then someone listens to it and says “Oh, that really reminds of this Grizzly Bear song or a Bob Dylan song.”

And you just have to accept their reading?

Yeah, exactly. You have to accept that there’s a reason why I make the genre of music that I do and that’s because I’ve listened to and processed and really sat with myself in a certain framework. But I’m always trying to break out of what I’ve thought was expected of me before. I think I’m pushing it so far, then I listen back and I’m like ‘No, this is definitely me.’

I think of this collection of songs as being more upbeat and sparse or simple in a way, because I didn’t really pick over the ideas or hyperedit things. I just wanted them to be the expressions that they were, but then listening back to them I can hear a throughline through a lot of my older music, particularly the stuff that I was making in the very beginning, in 2010, which is funny because as I was saying before I’m very different from when I was in my mid-twenties. I guess I went back to the well.

Tell us about “Veni Vidi Vici.” What’s the story behind this track?

I was playing with some friends in town just for a fun project with lots of guitar. My friend came to me and was like, “I have these songs and I think it’d be cool if there were like three or four guitar players in the band.” He was describing it as Kurt Vile meets Ratatat—kind of slacker indie rock. I had mostly been playing in a very mysterious, atmospheric, folk land for a while, so I thought it’d be fun to do something a little bit outside of my genre but something that I still really like.

We went in to record a couple of the songs that we had made demos of—maybe three or four songs that we’ve never ended up doing anything with. I was listening to these songs, helping him mix them, just sitting in front of the computer and playing the main chord part that you hear in the very first verse of the song and I just liked it. If I come up with an idea and I can remember it within two or three weeks it’s generally something that’s gonna stick and I’m probably gonna turn it into something.

I was actually listening to [an album by David Axelrod]. I loved this drum sound, so I was talking to my friend Graham [Jones] who plays drums on this song. I said, “This is kind of what I’m going for with the drum sound,” and then he came up with this drum part that’s very loud with lots of fills and a lot of moments that jump out to me. So I wrote the song around this guitar part and this drum part. 

There’s maybe four songs on this record where I wrote lyrics first, and then the rest of them are all very musically driven. I like working that way because it’s almost like soundtracking. ‘How does the music make me feel? Am I going to write towards that or am I going to write away from that? Do I defy the expectations of what this music sounds like and make a sad song sound happy, or do I make it sound more joyous?’ I just thought, ‘This song has a natural place that it wants the chorus to go.’ I’ve found it’s never healthy to be something that you’re not. I’d never really written a lyric that direct before. It made me laugh when I was writing it, so it had to stick.

When we last caught up with you about “Sixteen Stares,” in May, you said, “In the fall of 2008, I was temporarily living in Burbank and recording behind the Figure 8 wall mural from that Elliott Smith record cover.” Where else have you called home since then, other than Victoria and Berlin?

Other than spending those months in Burbank and a little bit of time in Berlin, I’ve spent most of my life not only in Victoria but within the same neighborhood, unintentionally.

What neighborhood is that?

It’s called North Jubilee—it’s a small neighborhood that’s just outside the downtown core. I grew up there, [but] most recently I moved away from there in Victoria for the first time. I’ve been living in a two-bedroom apartment for the last ten years so it’s interesting to be in a house with a yard that you have to mow. I have spent a lot of my time in one area, but to be totally honest I’ve probably spent more time on the road and touring than being at home over the past ten years.

Aidan Knight is out August 28 via Next Door Records. You can pre-order it here.