Sort Out What You Need To Sort Out: Kiley Lotz And Petal's 'Shame'

In the spring of ‘84, the Blue Nile put out a palatial synth-pop song that hung on an aching sentiment: “I will understand you.” Stay is the sort of number that doesn’t get released as a single anymore. It’s sad and makes no apologies for the fact, but that’s what Kiley Lotz likes about the band’s music. It doesn’t require much of a stretch to see her chalking up tour miles while getting lost in the spaces between its notes.

The Glasgow streets that the Blue Nile paced are a long way from New York, where Lotz lives now, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she earned her stripes in the city’s small, bustling punk scene, but her first full length as Petal, ‘Shame’, is cut from similar cloth to their early work. From the bruised purple of its cover to the manner its many indelible images hang in the air, it’s a record that invites an emotional response without getting tied up in the layers of cynicism or distant cool that can so often seem like pre-requisites. “I don’t think people should shy away from hard shit,” Lotz says matter-of-factly.

Midway through a UK tour opening for Beach Slang, and an hour or so removed from a tour of Stonehenge, Lotz discusses ‘Shame’ in terms of a fusion of thematic and musical elements, with regular reference to form underpinning meaning. The title is a plain, unvarnished reference to her anxiety disorder, the feeling she once attached to it and the affect it had on relationships with those closest to her. “I really kind of came to terms with what I was dealing with,” she told the Le Sigh shortly before the album arrived. “All the embarrassment and speculation, all the mind-reading of everyone hating me, didn’t exist. Everyone is carrying around some shame.”

Lotz’s writing rewards repeat visits. ‘Shame’ is informed by several influential strands from her past, whether that’s the rendering of Death Cab For Cutie’s ‘Transatlanticism’ as a single piece, Regina Spektor’s unflinching performances or her ongoing devotion to the theatre. Since moving to New York, Lotz has appeared Off Broadway in Underland, alongside Orange is the New Black star and punk luminary Annie Golden, and a life spent reading plays has given her lyrics a metaphorical dimension. There are individual moments on ‘Shame’ that linger, from a simple kiss under a streetlight to a mocking crack in the ceiling that might swallow you, or the the very breath of God. Tommy, its second song, is directly inspired by Naomi Iizuka’s Language of Angels, which Lotz once performed in Scranton.

“A lot of the time I’m not good enough at articulating my feelings,” Lotz says. “It’s easier to use those literary tools to navigate what I’m trying to sort out emotionally. I try to have a good balance of forthright lyrics and stuff that’s not as transparent, I guess, for my own sake. It’s hard to perform stuff every night that might be too visceral. If I can throw some imagery in there then I’m not picking scabs off every night, but also I’m letting other people interpret the songs the way they might. That’s always really compelling to me. The experiences I write about are certainly common, but everyone’s going to apply them to their own lives to sort out whatever they need to sort out by listening to the songs.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to make something that’s blatantly cathartic. If something’s hard and the guitar parts that are coming into my head are dense and slow and weird, even if I don’t want to write it out I try to force myself not to be too judgmental. That Regina Spektor record, ‘Songs’, and ‘11:11’, those first two, are so hard to listen to sometimes. She’s so off key and the piano is really dark and kinda crass. But it’s amazing because it’s raw and untouched and emotionally ugly. That’s a good thing and I think people need more of that. We’re in that internet age: ‘I want my Instagram to show what a great life I have.’ Where’s the room to be messy?”

‘Shame’ reveals itself slowly. It’s actually very heavy on hooks and glittering melodies, but they’ll only really stick the third, fourth, fifth time around. There is a sense that the songs have been stopped short just as they were about to head off on tangents, while dense guitars offer a counterpoint to harmonies that take flight. Crucial to that are Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins, of Tigers Jaw, who backed up Lotz on the record. Collins’ voice, in particular, is a vital component and a perfect foil. Will Yip, the Philadelphia producer who has had fingers in pies by Paint It Black, Pity Sex, Hostage Calm, La Dispute, Title Fight and Turnover in recent years, ensures that, as a whole, it walks a thin line between outright accessibility and buried treasure.

“I didn’t want it to be easy,” Lotz says. “That was something I said to Will right off the bat: ‘I don’t want this to be easily digested.’ Those experiences that I was writing about weren’t easy and they weren’t palatable. So why should the writing be? I try not to concern myself with writing hooks that I know people are going to be like ‘this is a jam’, or whatever. Heaven, for example, I had a verse-chorus for that song, basically, and cut the song right off without giving any sort of button to it. [Will] was like: ‘I really think you would benefit from giving the audience a little bit of closure here.’ The songs were weirder at one point and we decided that they could be pop songs. Why not see what it’s like to embrace that a bit while keeping the same melodies?

“As we were recording we all started to feel like it was becoming more of a polished thing, but not necessarily in a commercial sense. And I’m OK with that. I knew that maybe people wouldn’t totally vibe with the record right away. And I was OK with that. If they’re intrigued by it, maybe they’ll come back to it. I think that’s totally OK. The first time you perform a play it might be well rehearsed and great and easy and you get through it. The second time you perform the play you might have some crazy epiphany or moment where it’s brand new to you again. I wanted to make a record that people could listen to as they got older or come back to it and discover something new every time. Those are the records I cherish and want to artistically create as well. Now that I’m talking about it I feel like there was a lot more intention in that than I probably realised.”

In the UK, Lotz plays solo. For the first time in a couple of tours she winds back the clock to the early days, when she was ushered into a Scranton scene populated by the Menzingers, the Holy Mess and Tigers Jaw by Walsh and Collins. Back then she played piano and performed as Scout. Now she plugs in an electric guitar and is often backed by her friends. Touring is an exercise in removing work from its original context and seeing if it fits anywhere else. ‘Shame’ does. People are starting to sing along.

“It’s weird to go back to that but it’s a really good exercise in patience with myself, nerves and trusting that I can handle it,” Lotz says. “It’s nerve-racking because you hope that the songs translate the same, or differently in a good way. Every night I play the first song and as I finish I’m like: ‘Is it going to be crickets?’ But it’s been great. People have been really kind.”

‘Shame’ is out now on Run For Cover.

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