Kathryn Mohr is an Oakland-based experimental musician who released her first record, the self-recorded demo tape As If, in 2020. Though her music remains insular in nature, every record she’s made since has required some sort of separation from home: she laid down her 2022 EP, Holly, produced by Midwife’s Madeline Johnston, in rural Mexico, whose desert environment had a palpable influence on the music. Her latest effort and debut full-length, Waiting Room, released Friday via the dark experimental label the Flenser, was not only self-recorded but also conceived over the course of a month in eastern Iceland, as Mohr wove together songs in a windowless concrete room of a disused fish factory. The effect of the place is captured visually on the album cover and sonically through Mohr’s use of field recordings and imagistic writing, but the record only burrows further inward, at once liminal and confrontational, embodied and otherworldly. From the grungy, nightmarish exorcism of ‘Elevator’ to the ambient romance of the title track, it stirs the horror and tenderness out of big, empty spaces, be they physical or emotional.
We caught up with Kathryn Mohr for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about the beginnings of her musical journey, her month spent in a fishing village in eastern Iceland, the process behind her debut album, and more.
When did music start to feel like a vehicle for expression for you?
I started as a listener, and music was so important to me going through the really messy middle school to high school ages. I was like, “Oh, this is why I should be alive,” because this is so wonderful, and it spoke directly to my heart, for lack of a better word. It’s so genuine, so real – the things that people express in music. I was like, “Oh, I can relate to this. This is what being human is like.” It’s complicated, and it’s unclear – there’s not just happy and sad. That was very important to me, and it made me want to continue to live when I was growing up because there were all these people I could look up to who had very complex feelings. So I always wanted to add to this music community that I loved, and I always knew I wanted to be a musician, but I knew that’s very hard.
I never really had music lessons until pretty late in my teens. I finally got an acoustic guitar, and it wasn’t until I was 21 that I got an electric guitar. That was when I started writing my own music. Things came pretty late for me because I was just so like, “This isn’t something that can happen. I have to go do normal things and be an adult. Music is silly.” Which is what the people surrounding me were telling me: You have to get a real job and make money and not focus on something like that. But I never let that go, so here I am.
What kind of music felt genuine to you? You mentioned community, and I’m curious if it came from people you were surrounded by.
Yeah, it’s not really a sense of a physical community because there were not a lot of musicians in the town I grew up in that I knew. I didn’t have a lot of friends interested. It was more of this community that was made possible by the internet. I really fell in love with post-rock bands like Sigur Rós. When I was very young, I really liked their first album and their second album, so I got really into this online community of people talking about the strange samples they would use and how to interpret the lyrics or non-lyrics. That was kind of the taking-off point for just getting really deep into listening to entire discographies and reading all the lyrics and translating the lyrics if they’re not in English – just starting to try to imagine, “How does somebody make this?” I would also just read interviews nonstop of musicians I loved, because that’s the community I really want to be a part of: the creators. I wanted to create. People who make music come from all sorts of places, and the uniting thing is so emotional and personal.
I was listening back to As If, and the track ‘About Me’, as brief as it is, seems to capture something that still resonates in your music, which has to do with the way you engage with interiority and the self. Do you feel like there’s a thread between that song and record and what you’re working on now?
I’m a very visual person, and any emotion I feel comes with an image or a space in my head that I move through. A lot of the lyrics I write are about things I think about and see that help me express my emotions – kind of like strange, dream-like situations. One of my favorite lines from that particular song was “an all-way stop with no cars” – the idea of stopping, surrounded by darkness, and having to stop because the sign is telling you to, but there’s nobody else around. It’s those kinds of images that just circle around in my head, and the places and images are better at conveying emotions than normal words, like saying “happy,” “sad,” “melancholy.” I think I always bring that into my lyrics. From As If through Holly, and especially in Waiting Room, I use a lot of these images to try to create a world that people can interpret in whatever way they want. I want it to be very immersive and complete, because my favorite albums are, in my head, very visual. They’re their own little ecosystems.
Do you feel like the language is becoming more elusive or subconscious with each record in terms of the way that the images correlate to your emotions?
Before this record, I was listening to a lot of Sparklehorse, and the way he does his lyrics had a big influence on me. The lyrics are affected by whatever I’m listening to at the time, so it’s always a little different. I love the way Sparklehorse’s lyrics are so random, almost putting things that you wouldn’t normally think of together, like a burning piano. I kind of let myself get weird, like say things that don’t make sense. With Waiting Room specifically, just letting these words come out. I found that after I wrote the songs and listened back, at first I thought, “Yeah, this is just nonsense. I have no idea what I’m talking about.” But then later on, I was like, “Okay, I think I kind of get what I was talking about.” And the fact that I didn’t know at the time what I was talking about until later is very interesting. It was a new experience, just trusting that these random words are coming out of my brain and that these images I describe are meaningful without knowing their meaning originally.
One song that came to mind is from ‘Take It’, where you sing, “Holding on to my skeleton like fruit.” That’s a weird tangle of words.
Yeah, ‘Take It’ is a very good example of me doing the free-associative thing, just writing what I thought originally was nonsense. But then there are other songs, like ‘Elevator’, where I’m just telling a story, which is something I haven’t done much. I did it a little bit on Holly, specifically with the song ‘Holly’. To me, that is a narrative about a character’, and ‘Elevator’ is very much telling this very simple, bleak story about a person in an elevator. That was also a little bit different. It’s a recurring nightmare I have – I’ve always been afraid of elevators, and that was kind of an experiment. I’m not sure if it was successful or not, but it was fun to do, so I want to do more of that.
That’s my favorite song on the record; it still follows a dreamlike logic, but it hit in a really visceral way for me. What made you want to write about this recurring nightmare?
In my music, I’ve kind of been shying away from, in my opinion, my worst fears and my personal demons – some of my very personal trauma and terror — and not touching that anger. With ‘Elevator’, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna try to touch this.” The song is about dealing with a personal demon – that can mean whatever you want it to mean, but to me, it’s a very clear image of a person who I’ve seen my whole life – not a real person – but it always feels too scary to put into words and too crazy to write a song about. I love going toward things that scare me, so I was like, “I’m going to put this character into a song and try to express those really strong emotions are.” And I want to do more of that because a lot of my songs are “beautiful” or just kind of slow. I want to feel anger because that’s something I very much struggle with, to feel anger and to scream. It’s hard because I’m very – what’s the word – reserved, maybe, or shy, quiet. I don’t express anger a lot, and I’m so fascinated by it. ‘Elevator’ was like me trying to take away my wall a little bit.
Was the place where you recorded the album, this tiny fishing village in Iceland, something that allowed you to tap into those stronger emotions, or almost gave you permission to express them?
Yeah, I think so, especially because I often feel like somebody’s listening. When you live in a city like I do, I’m like, “My neighbors can hear me,” or “Somebody can hear me.” But out there, I was trying to shut that feeling down and not feel like I have to be quiet, not feel like I have to worry about bothering someone. I felt like, “I can just be as loud as I want, and I can bother people. I should not worry about this.” I still struggled with that, like, “What if one of the other people in the factory can hear me?” But it was definitely the loudest I’ve ever let myself be, and that was very powerful. That’s something that’s also come with playing live shows – I’m less and less afraid to turn my amp up to a normal loudness because before I would be as quiet as possible. I think being out there in a very sparsely populated area allowed me to let myself take up more space and feel somewhat less fear about making too much noise. The emotions I feel are always there; it’s whether or not I can let them out that stops them from coming out more. It’s very much a mental game.
Can you describe the factory or your room in it? What are your visual memories of it?
It’s a really special building. About half of it had been redone by local artists who worked to make it a creative space and bring electricity in for people to make art. I tended to put myself away in one of the less finished rooms, which is where the light bulbs [on the cover] were. It had very concrete walls, very cold, with a little heater at the top, and a very tall ceiling. It felt very small in there, but it was very comfortable. There were a lot of beautiful things that the artists had brought in, like rugs and chairs, and everything was very old – “old” as in it had a lot of energy, it had been well used. In a small fishing village, every object that comes in is brought in with care, and it’s not easy to bring things out there at all – trucks don’t come through, there are no grocery stores, nothing. So everything that comes in, the people in the village reuse. If it breaks, they’ll take it apart and put it into something else. Every object in those rooms was very beautiful and full of history.
I also took a lot of walks in the unfinished areas of the factory. Some of the areas were left exactly as they were when the factory closed. There was a locker room, and some of the belongings of the people who worked there were left behind. No lights, lots of dust, old cans of asbestos; it was very haunting. I love abandoned spaces because I love to just stand in them and feel their energy, and there’s so much energy in there because that used to be the main hub of Stöðvarfjörður; it was the life of that town. When it shut down in 2010, the town’s population dwindled down. All the people had to leave because there were no other jobs. Knowing that it used to be full of life and then was just emptied out made me feel a lot of emotions and think about the people who worked there, the families they might have had, the feelings they might have experienced. Being in a big concrete space is always very religious to me, I guess. It definitely had an effect on what I was writing.
I wonder if you feel like it’s more the building, the isolation, the history, or the actual mode of living that affected you the most while making Waiting Room.
It was very much the building itself. The way it was built was very interesting because it had started as a small concrete building, and then they just kept adding parts onto it, so it’s labyrinthine. It’s really big, but you could see where there had been an old building that they built another layer on top of, and then they built a side, then another side. That connects with so many dreams I have. I talk about the building specifically in one of the songs, ‘Rated’. I had no structure to my day, so that was different, but I had to create a structure. I’d usually go into the factory in the morning, work until I couldn’t anymore, and then in the afternoon, I’d have lunch and just go hike in the mountains. There were no trails; I’d just cross-country wherever I saw a big mountain and go towards it. That was magical. There were no fences. It’s kind of like a common area with the sheep grazing, and people won’t, like, shoot you for being on someone else’s property. It’s land, which is how I dream of all land being.
Do you feel like your sense of time was kind of warped and distorted, too? I feel like that’s something that feeds into your music generally.
Yeah, not having any structure was really freeing. I feel like that’s how people should live, honestly, without the normal 9 to 5 sort of thing. But of course, there was also the fact that the sun was up for like 11 hours a day, and it wouldn’t go down until almost midnight, because I was there in August. That was really disorienting and beautiful. I had no sense of time; I forgot about which day it was, I didn’t look at clocks. It didn’t matter. I was like, “Okay, I’m hungry, so I’m gonna eat a meal.” I loved that. I wish I could always live like that.
Did you change how you think about the past or trauma?
It didn’t really change how I thought about the past. I was trying not to think about the past too much, but when it comes up, it comes up, and I will do with it what I will. But yeah, everything in the past is very hard for me; it’s not simple or linear. The brain doesn’t work that way. Memories are not static; they’re warping. Sometimes they feel much longer, and sometimes they feel much shorter, even if they’re the same amount of time. That’s always been something I’ve felt, and it didn’t really change by being there.
You talked about how the factory was in the process of being remade, and I’m curious if and how you see Waiting Room, too, as a project of reworking memories.
Yeah, it’s all a processing of memories. Every time you think of a memory, you process it a little differently, and that changes what you remember. All of Waiting Room is my brain processing something and making sense of a lot of emotions I was feeling at the time – not necessarily very old memories, but recent things that were happening in that moment or just before, and also just general feelings about being alive. A lot about closeness and love, as at that time, I hadn’t been close to anybody in about five years. Learning about how to open up, to take that risk, to care about someone else and be cared for when it’s so much easier to just cut yourself off, like I had been doing for a very long time. So it was very much a processing of the idea of loving somebody else, how to approach it when it feels so impossible.
What was it like when you came back from Iceland?
It was pretty jarring. At first, it felt pretty easy, and then I kind of went through a lot of emotions. But I always have a lot of emotions and ups and downs. I just readjusted. It wasn’t such a big difference for me, making that change. I love chaos, so having to adapt from one life to another one was something I enjoyed taking on.
What about the songs you made during that time? Did you start seeing them differently?
That yeah, definitely. It’s kind of torturous working with music. [laughs] Sometimes I wonder, “Why do I do this?” because it becomes so hard to hear my own music, especially after I produce it and listen to it a million times. I start to go crazy; I can’t hear my music anymore. I don’t know if it’s good. I have to trust that at one point I liked it, so I have to trust that initial feeling, because the more I listen to it, it just becomes noise. Coming back from Iceland and listening back, sometimes I was like, “I don’t know what I’m listening to.” And then there were other times when I was able to become like a listener. I remember once, at the time I lived in San Francisco, I took a walk and put on my album to listen to through my headphones. I thought, “I expressed what I wanted to express. This sounds good.” I got chills out of it. And then, you know, I’d go back and listen again and think, “Yeah, I don’t like this.” [laughs] But I have to have a lot of faith in those moments when I can kind of hear it, not as myself, but maybe as someone else. It’s a very difficult process, but I think all musicians go through it.
The Holly EP was engineered by Madeline Johnston of Midwife. In terms of production, was having less outside output with this record a different process for you?
Yeah, it was really wonderful to be able to let go of my music and let Madeline take it into her hands and work on it. That required a lot of trust and faith in Madeline. It was beautiful to let go of that control and experience what it feels like to put it into the hands of someone I trust, but it was difficult as well. I definitely love how Holly came out, and I learned so much from Madeline. I feel like I’ve used that knowledge in Waiting Room. Doing it all myself put more pressure on me, but I also had all the control, and I think in the past, I haven’t really trusted myself to take full control. With As If, I didn’t know what I was doing at that time, and it’s okay that it sounds the way it does; some people like that it sounds so lo-fi. But with Waiting Room, it was hard, and I lost track of how it sounds, but I just trusted my ear. I let myself do what I had to do, not giving up control, and I think it came out pretty well. In the future, I would love to work with Madeline again, or anyone I trust and look up to. Having full control versus giving up control to someone else and trusting them – those are two wonderful and different experiences in music.
How do you deal with letting a piece of music reach a point of completion while staying true to an experience that still feels fragmented? Is that a struggle for you?
It’s definitely a challenge to know when a song is done. I feel like it comes pretty naturally to me when I know a song is finished. It usually happens when I’m exhausted and can’t hear it anymore. I’m like, “This is done. There’s nothing else I want to improve or change.” It kind of just comes down to that. Whether the song is a successful expression or if it’s a good song – I can’t really think in those terms. After so long of being with the song, I have to trust that, “Okay, this came out of myself a while ago. I’ve put a lot of time, work, and focus into it, and I’m just going to put it out.” Even if it’s not particularly successful to me, maybe it will affect someone else. Music is about getting things out there, not about killing them.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Kathryn Mohr’s Waiting Room is out January 24 via The Flenser.