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Rae Spoon (J J LEVINE)

When Uptown chatted with experimental alt-folkie Rae Spoon back in January, he casually mentioned that he was working on a follow-up to his much-lauded, Polaris Music Prize-longlisted 2008 solo album SuperiorYouAreInferior.
   
"It’s going to be called Love is a Hunter. I’m calling it ‘survival pop,’" Spoon said with a laugh at the time.    
   
He was kidding, but ‘survival pop’ is actually the perfect way to describe Love is a Hunter, which hit the streets on Aug. 17. Influenced by club culture, Spoon’s latest is a dance floor-ready, electro-charged exploration of identity, community, and the love and acceptance found under the bright disco lights.
   
"I was really inspired by dance music and being at dance parties," says Spoon over the phone from Calgary. "I was fascinated by the queer community and the process of finding community and belonging in the context of everyone being a bit lost."
   
As a transgender person, it’s a subject close to Spoon’s heart. Now 29, he says he was able to look back on his questing club kid days with a bit of objectivity.
   
"My friend says that this record is my farewell to my 20s, although I can pass for 15 sometimes," he jokes. "But I don’t think I could have made this record in my early 20s."
   
Musically, it’s also leaps and bounds away from the kind of music Spoon was making in his early 20s (it’s hard to believe, but Rae used to be a country crooner). While SuperiorYouAreInferior was an alt-folk album that merely flirted with glitchy electronics, Love is a Hunter sees Spoon further experimenting with electronic textures and sounds while still maintaining his folksinger’s sensibility.
   
"When I was living in Germany, I wanted to learn about programming and it ended up seeping into my music," Spoon says. "I started writing songs on the computer instead of the guitar."
   
Still, the odds of Spoon becoming a full-on electropop artist are slim to none.
   
"I like the sounds in electronic music but I don’t connect with the lyrics," he says. "I really like taking electronic sounds and applying them to a folk song. My songs are not for DJs."
   
It’s obvious from Love is a Hunter that Spoon was renewed by the risks he took on SuperiorYouAreInferior. It’s a fearlessly adventurous record that manages to be both playful and deeply personal. It’s dance music that resonates.
   
"Everybody says your first record is your easiest," Spoon says. "Even though Superior was my fourth album, it felt like my first. I didn’t want to follow it too closely with this one — so I just made songs I wanted to listen to. This record was really fun to make."
 

RAE SPOON
Oct. 1, Rudolf Rocker
w/ TWIN