K.Flay opens up about the creation of her upcoming new album ‘MONO’, out September 15, featuring some of her most personal and guitar-driven music yet, in this latest edition of our digital cover feature series, The Album Story.
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Read K.Flay, ‘MONO’ | The Album Story below:
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Back in summer 2022, K.Flay climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
Ticking an impressive item off her bucket list, it became a life-changing venture for the LA-based musician otherwise known as Kristine Flaherty – but not just in the ways she’d anticipated.
Around one week after stepping foot back on solid ground, Kristine woke up with complete hearing loss in her right ear – a freak occurrence that she soon learned was deemed permanent by her doctors.
Grappling with the question of whether she’d ever make music again following the alterations to her sensory world, the Illinois-born creative was forced to go back to square one.
Rediscovering her love for music whilst adjusting to the changes within her hearing, equilibrium, and balance, K.Flay found a fresh sense of purpose – resulting in the creation of her fifth studio album, ‘MONO’. An urgent and exciting modern rock record that encapsulates a truly remarkable period in Kristine’s life, here she joins us to tell the story of her latest era.
THE SOUND
“This is probably the fastest I’ve made an album, besides my debut. I wanted to make the best record of my career and I wanted it to be imbued with a sense of rigour, tension, and hard work,” K.Flay reflects.
Pondering how to approach a follow up to 2022’s ‘Inside Voices / Outside Voices’ whilst navigating unchartered territory within her personal life, for the first few months following her hearing loss, K.Flay scrambled to find her bearings.
Feeling disorientated and struggling to even listen to music – let alone create her own – she gradually found herself reverting back to a beginner’s mindset. Casting aside any previous notions of what she thought she knew about songwriting, and allowing herself the freedom to follow her instincts in a way that she hadn’t since her first album, once the creative energy started – it was difficult to stop.
“The hearing loss was a catalyst for a musical rebirth. There’s a lot about my hearing that changed, and in a good way, it eroded my sense of expertise.”
“I’m always searching for art, music, literature, and podcasts that give me a sense of personal power. For me, the natural sonic expression of that is rock music. Because of my hearing, I wanted things to really feel and sound a certain way.”
Being naturally led by the changes she was feeling, the fifteen songs on ‘MONO’ are some of K.Flay’s most guitar-focused to date, dripping in saturation and brimming with raw energy.
With instrumental sections tying together each chapter of the story, a tinnitus noise also appears as a motif throughout ‘MONO’, a subtle nod to the way in which Kristine now experiences the world around her.
“My hearing in my left ear is normal. In my right ear, I don’t hear anything externally, however I have a ringing in my ear that does not go away. It’s kind of like a phantom limb. If you’ve been a hearing person for long enough, your brain responds to the loss by producing its own neural signal.”
THE COLLABORATORS
Craving a feeling she refers to as “productive tension”, ‘MONO’ sees K.Flay calling upon an executive producer for the first time in her career, welcoming the guidance and perspective of long-time friend Paul Meany.
“I texted him one day and asked him to come over for dinner. Whilst he was there, I told him, ‘I’m working on this record. I feel like it can be great, but I need someone to push me. I think you’re the person to do that’. We both encouraged each other to think about things differently.”
“Paul identified songs that I had written off as things to pursue. ‘Spaghetti’ was a song that my girlfriend and I wrote in my home studio about a month after I lost my hearing. I needed to try singing again as a healing exercise, so we wrote a song for fun. It wasn’t meant to be released, but Paul heard it and was like, ‘No, that has to be on the record’.”
The two developed a natural collaborative process that allowed K.Flay’s vision for ‘MONO’ to thrive, and that spirit also flows through the album’s guest appearances.
With Kristine’s girlfriend’s band Kid Sistr featuring on ‘Spaghetti’, the album’s only other musical collaboration comes from Pierce The Veil’s Vic Fuentes, with the pair first meeting at K.Flay’s Seattle show shortly after Vic had had begun writing for Pierce The Veil’s fifth album, ‘The Jaws of Life’ (coincidentally also produced by Paul Meany).
“I can tell when somebody shares my values of humility and generosity of spirit, and I always felt that from the early time I spent with Vic. I had written a version of ‘Irish Goodbye’, and I was screaming on it. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, I have a friend who screams professionally!’”
“I went down to San Diego, and Jaime [Preciado, Pierce The Veil] tracked all the vocals at their home studio. Vic was about three weeks away from having his first daughter at the time, and it was a really homegrown and natural environment. Once we got into the space of collaboration, the song started to really make sense. There are ways in which our tastes intersect and ways in which they don’t, and I think that always makes for exciting collaborations.”
THE LYRICS
An album that journeys through the varying emotional stages of loss and transformation, throughout ‘MONO’ K.Flay delivers her most personal songwriting to date.
Learning to embrace discomfort and pain as parts of life in the same way as happiness and ease, the album’s story begins with the frantic refrains of opener ‘Are You Serious?’, a vital marker of intent for the latest chapter of K.Flay’s career.
“‘Are you serious?’ is something you say in exasperation when a bad thing happens, but there’s another reason why I chose those words.”
“That’s the question we all should be asking ourselves in terms of our relationships and our pursuits in life. This is our one shot in this body, so are you serious? Chillness has somehow achieved cultural supremacy, and whilst levity about life is important, I think you should be serious about whatever you’re putting your energy toward. That’s the bravest, most vulnerable thing you can do. If you try really hard and fail, that’s painful, but if people think this album sucks – at least I know that I tried.”
Battling with the notion of learning to be vulnerable, and establishing the differences between performative and authentic vulnerability, Kristine has come to learn that true vulnerability is about growth. Whether that’s growth in connection to yourself, in connection to others, or through changing your perspective on the world, ‘MONO’ journeys through K.Flay’s personal experience of finding peace in honesty.
“Over the last five years, I’ve been consistently putting myself in places of authentic vulnerability. I quit drinking three and a half years ago, which is an incredibly vulnerable thing. It’s why people don’t like being sober at a party, it’s kind of scary.”
“When the hearing loss happened, I felt really vulnerable. I needed a lot of help, and I found that by being in that place of vulnerability, a lot of wonderful things happened.”
“When you’re vulnerable and you need assistance, you give the people in your life an opportunity to be generous with their time and energy. Sometimes I think we forget that. I’m guilty of being like, ‘I am an island. I can help you, but I don’t need help’. That’s not an even exchange though. It’s hard to ask for help, and it’s hard to be honest about shame, but when you’re able to do those things – there’s so much beauty to be found.”
THE TITLE
Whilst there’s a very literal side to the album’s title, given the monophonic way in which Kristine now experiences the world, ‘MONO’ simultaneously charts the musician’s perception of aloneness, facing up to the reality that we are all individually trapped inside of our own bodies and minds.
“At many points in my life, I have been very disturbed by that. I’ve personally engaged in behaviour to try to get outside of myself, but what I’ve found over time is there can be great equanimity in accepting one’s aloneness. There can be a lot of peace.”
“That’s the journey of the record. At the beginning it’s like, ‘I’m alone and something terrifying is happening, what do I do?’, but by the end it’s a feeling of, ‘I am alone, and that is actually okay’.”
“The last track on the record, ‘Perfectly Alone’, is written about stepping offstage at a huge show and finding yourself sitting alone on a tour bus. When I first started out, I would usually have a beer to distract myself from the strangeness, but as I’ve gotten older my capacity for discomfort has grown. I’ve learned how to be inside myself comfortably, and I think all of us can get to that place. There’s so much more peace in my life, and there’s so much more space for exuberance.”
THE ARTWORK
Shot by one of the first photographers to ever accompany her on tour, Justin Bettman, the artwork for ‘MONO’ depicts K.Flay laying in a box that has been sawn in half, as per the popular magic trick.
With the album’s front cover featuring the top half of her body, and the back cover her bottom half, the idea came to Kristine’s mind amidst the grief of losing her hearing, originating from a simple sketch she had given to her creative director, Jennifer Pearl.
“Often when I think about death and loss, I conceptualise it as the world’s worst magic trick. It’s mystical, and it doesn’t feel real, but somehow it is real. As a viewer of that image, there’s something uncanny about it. There’s a spark of curiosity, I think.”
“The cover shoot was so fun because there was no Photoshop involved. We went to the magic shop, and I made sure I could fit into the box. Then we reskinned it to the grey colour that you see on the cover. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t very comfortable in there!”
THE FUTURE
Sonically focused on evolution, and personally driven by finding her purpose, ‘MONO’ is not just the sound of K.Flay persevering, but undoubtedly excelling in every aspect of her artistry.
Created in the aftermath of a potentially devastating setback, as she ponders the journey of arriving at her fifth album Kristine says it best herself, laughing as she proclaims, “I’m a born-again musician!”.
An artist intently focused on growth, K.Flay is proving that no matter what life throws your way, there’s always a way forward, and if you can find the strength to adapt, overcome, and pursue it – something truly magical could lie ahead.
“Resilience is a skill. I think it’s taught, and I think we learn it. I have two dads, my biological dad – who died – and my other dad who raised me. My living mother and father taught me a robust form of resilience. It’s about not simply enduring – but growing.”
“I certainly do not believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do think all of us have the capacity to take what is given to us in this life and create meaning out of it. That, to me, is the core of being human. You take these things that happen, you keep your eyes wide open, and you try to build something out of it.”
