Mental Health Detail Page

Mental Health, is Rae Spoon’s tenth full-length album and is being released on their label Coax Records. The album traces their personal journey with mental health through eight indie-rock songs that explore living with depression, anxiety, CPTSD and other challenges. Giving a voice to a perspective not as often heard in the media, the songs are a rumination on pursuing health without the pressure of being cured and the duality of trying to survive trauma and accept oneself at the same time.

Rae Spoon has been open through their writing and the NFB documentary, My Prairie Home, about growing up with a parent who had a, often untreated, mental illness in an unsafe home and the childhood abuse they experienced. The songs play like a follow up to that writing, being about the adult experience of being a survivor. Rae explores living as a trans/non-binary person in communities that experiences oppression and thus has higher incidence of mental health issues and suicide. Being part of these communities means losing friends to suicide more often and supporting each other through unspeakable conditions at times. Rae asks hard questions about how to cope with mental pain, to support friends and to live with trauma in late capitalism.

The album was recorded and co-produced by Jordon Koop at the Noise Floor on Gabriola Island. Rae was joined by the Pack AD’s Maya Miller on the drums and Becky Black on guitar and vocals. Rae’s ever-present electronic elements make an appearance through drum sequences and analog synthesizers and their band was made up of all-female/non-binary musicians. The result is the kind of infectious melodies and intricate pop music that Rae has become known for.

Go Away, the first song on the album, speaks to the lack of confidence and isolation that the stigmatization of mental health issues can cause. In this case the lyrics lay out many reasons why someone should not become attached one and read like an anti-personal advertisement. With the swell of a choir at the end arranged by Elder Sister Plum foreshadow the truth of the rest of the album which is that connection is still possible.