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This is the first in a series of year-end interviews with Portland musicians.
Natasha Kmeto had a big year. Maybe it could've been bigger.
At the end of 2014, it certainly seemed like the Portland electronic R&B singer-producer was heading toward a breakthrough. She was playing her biggest shows ever, opening for TV On the Radio and prepping to drop a new album, Inevitable, through TVOTR guitarist Dave Sitek's label, Federal Prism. By summer, though, the record had yet to surface. Caught in release-schedule limbo, Kmeto took back the masters and, in September, finally put it out via her longtime label, Dropping Gems.
Still, Inevitable was an artistic triumph, a bold declaration of identity set to some of her most vivid production work yet. Even without Sitek's imprimatur of cool, the album found its way to the national press, and earned Kmeto the best reviews of her career. And while 2015 may have begun with frustration, as Kmeto told us, she's coming out of the year with a sharpened vision of what she wants, and where she's going next.
Willamette Week: What was the highlight of 2015 for you?
Natasha Kmeto: Getting the record out and the reception it's gotten with national press and bigger press and getting attention even though we put it out on a small indie, it was awesome to get some recognition for that.
The album was supposed to come out on Dave Sitek's label. What happened with that?
It was mainly a timing thing. Without getting into too much detail, it just wasn't going to come out in the timeframe I wanted it to, and we were able to work something out where I was able to just get my masters and release it with Dropping Gems, because I didn't want to wait to put it out. I had already waited a while. It's really important for me to go out and play shows, that's one of the main motivations for me even doing this, and in order to get out there, you have to release music. I'm in this position where I'm starting to segueway into playing more shows with hard ticket sales and less festivals and DJ nights, so it was really important for me to get this material out. It worked out well.
Was it frustrating for you, this whole experience?
Um, yes. [Laughs.] I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, because there's no bad blood or anything, but I think in any position where an artist wants to get their music out there and can't, it's frustrating.
You put Inevitable out on Dropping Gems and still received probably the most positive reception of any album you've released so far. What did you take away from that whole experience?
I do think reception to music does rest largely on the content of the music, which I think a lot of people on the business side of the industry sometimes forget. They're really busy chasing hype and statistics and YouTube plays and all this kind of stuff, but I think in the end the content is obviously still what drives it. I learned a lot, and got exposure to a lot of different sides of the industry, and I was able to hone in on what I actually want. Which hasn't changed, but I'm more solid in the fact that I want to release my music the way I want to do it, and this project is very much about my vision and making that happen. The team I have working with me is great, and we can do really great things. Obviously, budget helps, but having the right vision for it to begin with is the most important part.
All the records you've made so far have felt very personal or intimate, but Inevitable seemed to be on another level of intimacy, at least from a listener perspective. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I'm getting more personal and intimate with myself, if that doesn't sound weird. [Laughs.] I'm becoming more comfortable with my own identity and with myself, and I think my music accurately depicts where I'm at with myself. Because of that, it probably sounds pretty personal. With my new stuff, I'm beginning to explore more with writing from the perspective of other characters—a different gaze, so to speak, than my own. It's something I've always wanted to do as a songwriter for this project, but with Inevitable, I finally pushed through all the catharsis with my sexual identity and all that to the point where I can explore it from a more abstract perspective.
It feels like Crisis and Inevitable were two parts of the same journey.
Absolutely. I wrote Inevitable right after Crisis came out. I was done with it six months after Crisis came out, and it was very much supposed to be a follow-up, which it is, but it's weird speaking on things which, for me, when I was processing through them, are a year and a half old.
What was it like for you putting Inevitable out into the world? Did it also feel different from Crisis when that was released?
It always feels good to let people know where you're at creatively after you've been sitting on it. Obviously, a lot more people are discussing my sexuality, because that's part of a lot of the topics being hit on on the record. But for the most part it's been a nice balance of people not making it solely about that. I get asked a lot if being a woman and being queer affects how I make music, and that's the silliest question. It's like asking me if having brown hair affects how I make music. It's been nice, though, to open the dialogue to even pointing that out to people. I am an "other," so to speak, but it doesn't mean we can't talk about the same things. I'm trying to navigate the space between just being treated like an artist but also speaking to a different narrative and having that be addressed.
It really seemed to mean a lot to the queer community.
And it means a lot to me to experience art that's coming from a narrative I can relate to. From that perspective, I am very happy to be a champion for that. On the same side, I don't want it to feel exclusive or like anybody can't relate to what I'm talking about, because in the end they're very human things.
You also started playing with Chanti Darling this year. How do that come about?
When [singer Chanticleer Tru] was in Magic Mouth, we had done a cover swap, so they'd covered a song of mine and I'd remixed a song of theirs for a Red Bull Sound Select thing. That's when I started hanging out with those kids. Chanticleer and I realized we had a lot of common musical backgrounds, a common interest in a lot of R&B—we're the same age and grew up on the same stuff. As things with Magic Mouth were going the way they went, he started talking to me about wanting to work on some different material, and he was working with Damon [Boucher], our other producer, on jamming out some R&B stuff. A couple months later, I was invited to a jam session with him and Damon and Rebecca [Cole], our bass player, and Hannah [Blilie] from the Gossip, and we all clicked. My own stuff is definitely R&B, but it doesn't have the levity Chanti Darling does, so it's nice to work on something that isn't so emotionally rigorous.
Is that mostly what you get from that group? A little release from the gravitas of your solo work?
Yeah, it's nice to be a contributing member to something. I'm not the main dish in it, but Chanti has one of the best voices I've ever heard, so it's always a pleasure to be able to think of harmonies and melodies [with him].
What's up with you for 2016? You said you've started writing again. Is there going to be another record soon?
I hope so. I'm not sure if we're going to play the record label game again. I'm touring the entire U.S. in February with Ghostly International artist, Beacon, and I'm going to Europe next week, too. I'm looking to get as much new writing done as possible and then see how it feels from there. I'd like to get something new out within the year, but knowing what I know now about the system and how a lot of this stuff works, I'm not going to set any expectations for timelines.
MORE: Natasha Kmeto's Inevitable is available on iTunes.
Willamette Week