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Austra’s Katie Stelmanis

When Uptown last chatted with Katie Stelmanis, she was a little-known, classically trained opera singer-turned-solo artist with a penchant for crafting weirdo indie-rock tunes with a decidedly operatic bent. (She was also a bespectacled brunette.)
   
These days, Stelmanis is the striking, white-blonde, silver-voiced frontwoman of Austra — a gothic, electro-pop outfit that’s making major waves thanks to its shimmering debut, Feel It Break. Released in May via Paper Bag Records/Domino, the much buzzed-about album was shortlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize and has garnered the Toronto-based trio a ton of critical praise. (A remix album, Sparkle, was released in the summer.)
   
Feel It Break was also a long time coming for Stelmanis, 27, who had been grinding it out in the Toronto indie rock scene for some time.
   
"I feel good about this album — I’m glad it finally came out," she says with a laugh, over the phone from California. "It’s a landmark for us. It marks a certain level of ability and a time in our life. When it came out I wasn’t totally satisfied with it, but I’m happy it came out."
   
Stelmanis sounds almost relieved, and for good reason; she’d been living with many of the compositions that make up Feel It Break  for years. "I wrote some of these songs in 2008," she says. "I never thought I’d release a record with those songs and the ones I wrote in 2009."
   
Still, there’s a cohesion to the record that belies its protracted writing process.
   
"There was a conscious effort to write songs that appeal to both headphone listening and the dance floor," Stelmanis says. "They don’t have to be opposite ideas, but there’s definitely contrast."
   
Indeed, Feel It Break is all about the dark drama. Icy, jagged synths are both complemented and contrasted by Stelmanis’ ethereal vocal melodies, and haunting, atmospheric soundscapes are anchored by big, bottom-heavy beats.
   
While Stelmanis’ soaring soprano is certainly the focal point of the album — and the band borrows its handle from Katie’s birth certificate (it’s her middle name) — Austra is definitely not a solo project. Stelmanis’ long-time bandmates Maya Postepski (drums, programming) and Dorian Wolf (bass) were integral to making Feel It Break the album it is.
   
"This project is collaborative," Stelmanis  stresses. "When I was performing as a solo artist, I was doing everything myself. I used to be very reluctant to let people into the songwriting process. But I sort of got over it and realized that collaboration yields good things. I didn’t want to be a solo artist anymore.
   
"When you’re doing everything yourself, you lose perspective on how to make a song that people can understand," she adds. "You keep each other in check."
   
Perhaps the biggest difference between Austra and Katie Stelmanis, The Band, is Austra’s unapologetic fondness for catchy pop music. (Stelmanis’ solo material skewed more experimental, which actually did a disservice to her great big voice.)
   
"I felt like we made a conscious effort to create something more palatable," she says. "It felt like a natural progression. We’d been playing for so long as Katie Stelmanis and a lot of stuff I wrote as a solo artist was challenging."
   
Her ear-bending early work is no doubt the result of Stelmanis attempting to reconcile her identity as an opera singer with her identity as an indie musician. After high school, she had planned to move to Montreal to study opera, but she felt the pull of Toronto’s vibrant music scene. Ultimately, she opted to put her studies on hold — but it wasn’t a decision she made lightly.
   
"It was a big deal to quit classical music," she says. "I was 19 or 20 and I questioned it for a long time. Now, I feel good about it."
   
Of course, Stelmanis hasn’t abandoned her opera training — in fact, her unique voice has gone a long way in defining Austra’s sound.
   
"We recently did this thing for Operanation," she says, referring to the October fundraiser put on by the Canadian Opera Company. "When I was 18, that’s where I wanted to be — I wanted to be in the ensemble chorus. It was neat to play with them in a way I’d never imagined."
    Austra is certainly opening doors for Stelmanis. Although her life doesn’t look how she thought it might at 18, she’s happy with the way things have worked out.
    
"The thing about being an indie musician is that the options are limitless," she says. "I can make a piano record. I can make a dance record. I can make any kind of record I want — and that’s a great feeling."
 

AUSTRA
Nov. 24, 8 p.m., West End Cultural Centre
w/ Tasseomancy and Young Galaxy