MAMA Kin reflects on her complex relationship with husband John Butler in the raw and unflinching new album Promises.
The Freo couple’s domestic laundry is laid out to bare in a soul-searching record that documents the highs and lows of a 25 year marriage, as well as the introspection that accompanies middle age.
“This album and these songs gave me language for a state in our relationship that I found so confusing that I had no language for,” Kin says.
“A break down of sorts. A crossroads. These songs become guide rails, maps scratched in the mud for where we had been, and how we might get through.
“They helped me understand where I had gone wrong, what I needed to take responsibility for, what I needed to claim, and what a redesign might look like.”
Kin is at her searing best in the album single We are the Water.
Drenched in reverb and echo, it sounds like a Phil Spector ballad from the 1960s, except the lyrics aren’t bubble-gum pop, they’re Kin ruminating on regret, longing and the first flush of youth.
A kind of sensual confession with lyrics like:
‘I just wanna be satiated. Just like I was. When we first kissed.’
According to sources, Butler’s new album also reflects on their relationship, and one can’t help but think of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy.
But that was a hagiography; Promises has more in common with Lennon’s emotionally raw solo album – Plastic Ono Band.
It will be interesting to hear Butler’s take when his new album PRISM is released next month.
Adding to the sense of therapy-through-music is the relationship woes of Dingo Spender, a singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who collaborated with Kin on Promises. It’s their second album together as the duo Mama Kin Spender.
“The songs are essentially taking any single journal entry from the last three years of my love life and adding music to it,” Spender says.
“The ending and transformation of a marriage, the pain of grief, the yearning for love, the twisted top lip of sarcasm in response to the honesty of accountability, the owning of a great many slippery truths that lay hidden in my guts, the searing, cleansing power of rage, of letting go, of accepting something I just couldn’t stand to accept…
“It’s basically very complicated and ornate therapy but woven into songwriting, self-expression, the joy of singing, and ultimately, the power of our friendship as we held each other through storms that were set to break us.”
• Mama Kin and Dingo Spender. Photo by WILK
Despite the heavy subject matter, the songs have great hooks, melodies and musicianship, so you never feel like you’re at a marriage counselling session.
Mama Kin Spender are going on tour in September to promote Promises, but it may not end there.
Plans are afoot to turn the album into a live theatrical production, led by award-winning director Craig Ilott – “a multi-disciplinary show that will bring the album’s themes to life through live music, design, movement and storytelling.”
At the end of the day, Kin says Butler and her are each other’s “greatest champions and supporters” but at times sparks can fly: “We are both intense and stubborn in our own ways, and we can be righteous and we are passionate,” Kin says.
“We care deeply about what we are doing whether it is raising our family, campaigning on social or environmental issues or making and releasing our music.
“So yeah there are some robust discussions, but above all at this stage in our lives we are constantly learning and practicing how to choose kindness first.”
On Promises, Kin seems to have found peace in her music and exorcised any hang-ups and regrets that were bubbling away inside.
The new Mama Kin Spender single Arrows has just been released and the album will be released on August 15. For more info see mamakinspender.love.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK