A Chat with Saturnine Sighs (23.09.21)
Formed approximately five years ago, Saturnine Sighs is a Canadian duo proving them are not to be pigeon-holed. Showcasing several genres ranging from classic rock to 90s alternative and more, Brianna “Bree” Kane (vocals and songwriting) and Brenden McAuley (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, mixing and songwriting) are sharing their unique music with the world. We speak to the pair about their album Saturnine Sighs, reincarnation and celebrity crushes.
OSR: How did Saturnine Sighs come about?
McAuley: I was working on an electronic concept album on my own in college. I wanted a female singer for the project but I didn’t know anyone. One day I was scrolling through Facebook and saw that one of my friends liked Bree’s Facebook page. So I clicked to see who she was and discovered her music on YouTube. I messaged her on Facebook and sent her some samples of what I was doing and she liked it, so we met up at a Tim Hortons to talk about it. We started recording that album but shelved it because it was too ambitious for the start of our careers. Still planning on releasing it someday. It will be our masterpiece.
Kane: I think Brenden saw a cover I’d done on Facebook with a mutual who he’d gone to high school with. We met for coffee at a Tims and talked about everything under the sun in regards to our taste in music and future projects. He had written a 21-track avant-garde concept album and wanted a female lead to sing it. We spent the next year working on that, but eventually decided we needed to write some stuff together. It’s been a slow process, but that’s kind of our style, so it works.
OSR: How did you choose your band name?
McAuley: We were originally called Blacklight but there was a ton of artists with that name already on Spotify, so we decided to change it to something more unique. We were talking on Facebook and I told Bree that my favourite word is Saturnine. It literally means “of Saturn”. Saturn has a slow orbit so it basically means slow, gloomy and melancholy. I just like the sound of it. Bree loved it too but we needed a second word. We liked the idea of alliteration, and our music has a lot of non-verbal vocals in it, like sighing “ahhs”. So we decided on Saturnine Sighs.
Kane: Honestly, the alliteration is what sold me, but Brenden loves the word Saturnine. Of course, I do as well, but I’ve always liked the idea that it was two words since we’re a duo. In the beginning, I tried to overanalyse it to determine who was more saturnine and who was more of the sigh portion. And while I believe I represent a lot of the sadness, I kinda like to think of “Sighs” as that part of ourselves that refuses to take the idealised melancholy too seriously.
OSR: What can you tell us about your album Saturnine Sighs?
McAuley: It’s our debut album that we wrote and recorded together in 2018-2019. We experiment with a lot of different styles so I sort of thought of the album as being like a sampling tray. A little bit of this and that, foreshadowing all the different styles that we’ll be exploring in the future.
Kane: I really and truly consider it a homage to that darker side of ourselves. There are a lot of references to sex and loneliness and suicide, and it really gives me that feeling you get while sitting on the carpet in front of the tv when you were eleven and everything was falling apart. If you ever want to feel like the main character, just go for a walk in the woods and pop ‘Swoon’ into your ears.
OSR: What was the recording experience like?
McAuley: Difficult but we had a lot of freedom because we weren’t doing it on anyone else’s authority. We recorded it in my basement and spare bedroom. The whole thing was completely DIY and we were learning as we went.
Kane: A lot of our recording in the past has either taken place in my bathroom or Brenden’s basement. He can do a lot with just a room and a laptop! Though, as much as it was frustrating to find our quiet spaces, it was fun too. I think the most hilarious part is no one will ever know the extent to how many sighs and moans we’ve recorded for layering.
OSR: Did you face any challenges when writing and recording Saturnine Sighs?
McAuley: Where do I begin? We basically had no idea what we were doing so it was like trying to build a ship while sailing it. Neither of us had experience writing with other people. We were both hermits who had been practising alone in our rooms our whole lives so shifting gears into collaboration mode was awkward at first. I had to re-record most of my guitar parts at least once because I had no experience recording guitars, but the drums were the hardest part. I’m not a drummer but I still wanted to do the drum parts myself. I ended up buying a cheap electronic drum kit and recording via midi with EZ Drummer, a drum VST. So it has the sound and feel of an actual drum recording but it was just me playing an electronic kit. Again, I had to learn along the way. There were some songs where I had to do 200 takes for the drums because I just didn’t have the skill set to play what was in my head. On top of all that, I still live with my parents so I could only record when they were out of the house. Absolute nightmare, but we got it done.
Kane: Writing with another person is HARD. Brenden is analytical, whereas I tend to drown myself in metaphors and purple prose. He picks up the guitar and figures out notes, and I find my place in the music just by singing and making it up as I go. We realised pretty quickly that our writing styles complement each other that way, which made easier the whole process.
OSR: Do you believe song placement is important on an album and how did you choose to place the tracks on Saturnine Sighs?
McAuley: Song placement isn’t the most important thing but it obviously is important to some degree. The tracks need a flow where it feels different from the last track but not completely different and jarring. We wanted to start with a banger so ‘Alright’ was track one, but then it slowly descends from there until ‘Alien’, the sad song. It had to pick up from there so we saved ‘Sugar High’ for the second half. I wanted ‘Coming Soon to Home Video’ to be somewhat of a “palette cleanser” to get us out of ‘Alien’. It’s such a weird little thing that it just kinda breaks it up like an interlude and you can follow it with anything. So that helps us get back into the groove with ‘Sugar High’. We knew ‘Blacklight’ was the closer so that was obvious, and ‘Someone Else’ nicely fell in the 7th spot.
Kane: Absolutely. I actually obsess over it with the artists that influence me. In this case, Brenden took the reins and, in my opinion, there’s no other way it could have been done.
OSR: What do you hope people take from your music?
McAuley: Whatever they want. I want them to have fun and hopefully think or feel something.
Kane: We live in a day and age where social media is an addiction that plagues most people with a screen. Oftentimes I feel trapped in it and my only escape is when a better addiction comes along. I think music is a better addiction than say Instagram. So my hope is that the lonely people listen and feel a little less trapped.
OSR: If you could be reincarnated as an animal, what would it be and why?
McAuley: Humans are an animal so I’d just wanna be another dude. Being any animal other than human would suck unless you want to be eaten.
Kane: Definitely a fox. They’re cunning and I feel like I would be happy living out my days in a peaceful moss-covered forest.
OSR: Did you have a celebrity crush as a teenager and, if so, who was it?
McAuley: Jennifer Lawrence.
Kane: Emma Watson. I was obsessed with checking her website every day which, unfortunately, does not exist anymore.
OSR: Do you have any future plans as Saturnine Sighs?
McAuley: Well, we have a new single coming out on October 1st. It’s two fun Halloween-themed tracks, so that’s the immediate future. The next step after that is just getting some backing members together and getting up on stage. We haven’t played any shows yet so that will be a very important step. As for the long term, there’s so much that we could do that it’s overwhelming. I have so many plans and songs written that the challenge is figuring out what NOT to do. Lots of things in store.
Kane: We have a dual single coming out on October 1st, which by happenstance is the day of my wedding, so we have our hands full! It’s two tracks, one Brenden wrote and the other I wrote. My hope is that we can start up a small tour in the next year and a half to get our feet wet. I’m excited to get back on stage again, it’s been far too long.
Thanks to Brianna Kane and Brenden McAuley for speaking with us. For more from Saturnine Sighs check out their official website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.
