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Raw, confessional indie rock isn't in short supply lately — but even amidst an embarrassment of riches, Petal's Magic Gone stands out. Scranton-based singer/songwriter Kiley Lotz's second album (out this Friday on Run For Cover) is a brutal and beautiful document of Lotz's own personal journey since the release of Petal's excellent 2015 debut Shame. Produced with spare clarity by Pennsylvania scene magnate Will Yip, much of Magic Gone pares Petal's sound back to piano, guitar, and Lotz's incredible voice, allowing every word of hers to be deeply felt with permanence, like making a handprint in concrete.
And Lotz's words matter more than ever, as Magic Gone chronicles Lotz's own personal growth — both through coming out as queer, and getting substantial treatment for mental illness. Things came to a head while she was on a six-week tour in 2016: "I slowly started to feel myself break down a little bit," Lotz reflects over coffee at Greenpoint café Budin. "I'd known [I was queer] for a long time, but I started coming to terms with it. Denial is such a strong coping mechanism. I'd always talked about struggle, but I never dealt with it."
"A lot of my confidence was gotten from external factors, rather than myself," she continues. "I didn't have self-esteem, and I didn't know who I was because I wasn't out and I couldn't even figure out how to dress myself every day. It was hard to feel comforted or inspired by anything, but recovery allowed that to grow. I got to a point where I felt happy to be a work-in-progress."
We spoke with Lotz about her Pennsylvania upbringing, the importance of mental health treatment and knowing yourself, and why indie rock is becoming more diverse and inclusive than ever.
Tell me about growing up in Scranton.
Pennsylvania is interesting, because you have Philly and Pittsburgh, and then the middle of it is like the South. They call it Pennsyltucky [laughs]. It's accurate to an extent, but Scranton was a nice place to grow up. My dad was a fireman and my mom was a teacher, and I had a nice childhood. When I got older, I started to see there were a lot of issues there. We'd get campaigned really hard every four years for the Presidential election, because we're a small enough county that we usually go blue, but we can swing the entire state.
People are working really hard to rebuild the city now, but there's a lot of shitty politics that need to be resolved. The incarceration rate since 1970 went up, like, 1700 percent. There's unjust policing, poverty, opioid addiction. But you have great folks doing good stuff, too. This year's the first year they ever flew the Pride flag outside City Hall, which was really exciting because one of our commissioners is staunchly homophobic. It felt really good to see that up there.
How did you find your voice as an artist?
My mom was the church choir director, so I was always singing from when I was very little. I started playing piano when I was five, and I'm a type-A personality, so I practiced a lot. I wanted to try anything. A bible camp counselor burned me a bunch of Regina Spektor albums, and I was like, "What is she doing with her voice? This is crazy!" It made me want to do a bunch of weird shit. When I recorded my first record, I was very self-conscious about how I sang, because I didn't sound how my peers sounded like. Some people would say, "It's shrill!" But some of the parts I write are purposefully atonal, and I don't want to change that just because someone isn't used to it. The whole point is to expose yourself to different things.
Tell me about the journey you went through between Shame and Magic Gone.
I'd been struggling with mental health disorders since I can remember, but I never had a proper diagnosis or consistent treatment. I'd deal with it, and then put it on the backburner and keep forging ahead. In my mind, tangible signs of success were signs that I was okay. But that wasn't necessarily true. When I came home from tour, I was in a long-term relationship with a man, and I was really scared as to what coming out as queer would look like. When you identify under the bi-pan umbrella, you encounter a lot of very interesting questions. I wasn't prepared for that.
Were these questions coming from other people, or yourself?
Both. The external questions reinforced my own questions about myself, and built a lot of distrust in my person. My friends and partner were really accepting, but I still didn't feel good. It felt like I had to prove it was true, which felt depressing. I'd get up every morning and I had a hard time picking out clothes to wear, because I wasn't sure how to present. When I was wearing a dress, it felt like a costume. When I dressed more “masc,” it felt like I was trying too hard. I had support from queer friends and family where I felt like I'd eventually get my footing, but my mental health rapidly declined and I was struggling financially. My symptoms were getting worse — I was having paranoia, and massive panic attacks that would last for hours.
After the last tour, I had the tough realization that I needed to get some serious help and put a hard stop on working to take care of myself. It was a really challenging decision. I completely focused on feeling better, because at that point I didn't have a great concept of reality anymore. I've been in treatment for almost a year and six months, and I'm doing a lot better, but recovery is so non-linear. It's something I have to keep challenging myself with all the time — understanding that I'm gonna have good weeks and down weeks, or months, but it doesn't mean all that work is null and void. Sometimes it feels discouraging, because I'm like, "I'm going to be doing this forever."
That's life, though.
Yeah, shit is always gonna be happening.
I think society is starting to realize that coming out or realizing something about your sexual or gender identity isn't the end of anyone's journey.
You might see in mainstream culture that there's a general awareness, one that's more progressive than it's ever been. But there's still a lot of work to do. The acknowledgment is part of it, but it's also about providing services, care, and equal rights and representation. That's something I've been thinking about a lot in the music industry, too. I go to venues every day, and some of them aren't wheelchair accessible, or they give you a hard time if you ask for gender-neutral bathrooms.
The #MeToo onslaught we've seen, with musicians getting called out for abusive behavior — that's enabled by the industry. Every time stories come out and labels start donating money, that's good, but where's the infrastructure to create preventative structures and care for victims? Pushing people to the periphery isn't going to work, because they keep abusing people and that behavior continues. We still get handed tons of free alcohol, but we're not getting paid enough to have health insurance. There's stuff we can do, but people just have to try it. It takes time and money, which aren't things people always want to give, but fuck it! Let's just do it. If it means one less royalty check because it's going towards those things, I don't give a fuck.
Indie rock has changed a lot in terms of attitude and overall makeup over the last three years. What do you think has changed, and why?
It's important to acknowledge that there have been so many advances, but there's so much more room to grow. It's irrefutable and undeniable that people who aren't straight white dudes have a lot to offer. In the music industry, it felt like for a long time that there was this very small margin of space for women, queer people, and people of color to be successful. In the last couple of years, it seems like — hopefully — we're saying, "Why does it have to be that way?" There's enough room for everyone. Instead of competing for that space, why not make more space?
We should be focusing our attention on the structural things that are in place to keep us down. That's how patriarchal and authoritative systems work, right? You pit the people you want to oppress against each other so you can keep doing what you're doing. From a business standpoint, if you're a horrible, misogynistic piece of shit, we don't have to work with you. We can stand on our own. If you're not interested, we don't need your help.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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