The Many Moods of Marlaena Moore

The pop-rock singer-songwriter opens up about her fourth studio album, Because You Love Everything.

Published on January 6, 2025

by Maggie McPhee

Photos and design by Loïcia Samson

Stepping inside Marlaena Moore’s apartment is like entering a museum of misfit objects. The Edmonton-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter’s space overflows with novelty items procured from antique shops and garage sales. “I’ve just dusted,” she explains, but is quick to point out a heap of vintage jewelry sprawling the entirety of a dresser. “This is my pile, this I could not dust, because it’s just too much.”

Counted in her eclectic collection? A prop gun, a sword sold to her “by a child” at Saint Michel Flea Market, VHS tapes, a pink flamingo, a shrine to Kate Bush, and Victorian era miniature model homes. “Tiny stuff is good. Tiny stuff or big stuff,” she says, pulling out an orange Crayola crayon the size of a baseball bat. Retro paintings and movie posters fill the walls, and old pulp fiction books overspill what remains of any counter space.

Our tour leads to a small studio room which Moore shares with her partner and creative collaborator Scott “Monty” Munro, filled to the brim with instruments, paint bottles, recording equipment, vintage clothing and collaging supplies. Over the weekend, she’d been re-recording the sound design and score for a short film, working on her first graphic novel, and assembling red sequined costumes for her upcoming Christmas-themed sketch comedy show. Within five minutes of knowing her, it’s already abundantly clear: Marlaena Moore loves everything.

“It’s honestly been life saving,” she says of the sketch comedy show. “Being able to be creative purely for fun, to be playful, and lean into that part of myself that, for a while, wasn’t getting enough attention.”

Tensions have defined Moore’s musical career, between play and work, creativity and ambition, reality and expectations, and a need for self expression that exceeds genre molds. These paradoxes show up in her pop-rock output in the form of contemplative lyrics, contrasting sonic elements, and dramatic vocal runs on pace with Caroline Polachek. Her fourth studio album Because You Love Everything is as chock-full of these flourishes as her apartment is with knick knacks. Gravelly guitar erects a wall of sound, upon which bright riffs and synthesizers splatter paint. Moore’s voice reaches these same lower and higher registers, and she ties everything together with lyrics articulating the vicissitudes of the modern condition, the oh-so-common flip-flopping from self-loathing to self-loving that defines our generation’s mental malaise.

“This album was originally called I Don’t Really Know What I’m Doing Anymore,” Moore shares, referring to a time she felt angsty and lost. Renaming it Because You Love Everything worked to reframe that aimlessness as a positive. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore and it’s actually a good thing — you’re more open to everything and you love everything,” she says. At this, her eyes grow misty and she dabs below her lashes, laughing at her sensitivity. “I cried trying to describe Paddington to [Munro] one time.”

The lyrics “You could do anything/You can go anywhere,” open the album against a backdrop of dissonant noise. Moore continues: “You can’t make up your mind, so you break your own heart/Because you love everything.” Within the first thirty seconds, she’s introduced a sort of thesis statement for the album, exploring the inextricable yin-yang of joy and sorrow, freedom and constraint. Every choice we make negates a different choice, and all of Moore’s competing artistic interests can either deplete or enrich her total output. It just depends on perspective.

Moore’s love of music, in particular, blossomed at a young age as a self-described independent hippie child loose in the streets of Edmonton. Between watching Wes Anderson movies at the Princess Theatre and hours of Lindy Hop swing dancing, she began writing music, first on piano, then branching out to guitar. “I feel like I sound like such an asshole when I say this,” she says, laughing, “but I actually don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t writing songs. It’s just always been how I’ve coped with everything.”

Not only did Moore start making music young, but she was also, for the most part, teaching herself as she went. “I was really resistant to being taught anything. I taught myself how to ride a bike when I was seven,” she admits. “It’s something I’m still trying to figure out and reckon with: welcoming in help and ideas. Working with [Munro] has been so good, sometimes challenging, but really necessary for learning how to work with people. And now I’m at a place where I look forward to it.”

Despite her independence, community has been integral to Moore’s journey as an artist. She came of age during a peak cultural moment in Edmonton, when groups like Field + Stream and Wares were circulating the local scene, stirring up a creative frenzy that all converged on Wunderbar. “There was a really wonderful beautiful scene where I got to meet really amazing people and there was this gorgeous blip of amazing art,” she explains.

She set out as a musician within that ecosystem, releasing records and touring with local talent, opening for Angel Olsen at Sled Island and eventually recording her third studio album, 2020’s Pay Attention, Be Amazed! with Chad VanGaalen. “There was this one time we were doing a later session,” she reminisces, “and we took a break to walk Chad’s three-legged dog in the woods. And then he was like, ‘Oh, I think it’s dusk,’ and he just takes birdseed out of his pocket and is like, ‘Alright, everyone, it’s time to feed the birds now.’”

“That time, I can feel myself getting emotional thinking about it, because it was just the sweetest, purest creative time,” she says, reaching for the corners of her eyes to wipe away tears, laughing again.

Moore started laying the groundwork for Because You Love Everything five years ago. Cooped up in Munro’s parents basement in Calgary during the pandemic, the pair began tinkering away at new songs, surfacing for air once in a while to go browsing yard sales for trinkets. They finished the record shortly after moving to Montreal, but Moore came up against various roadblocks that hindered its release, and found herself losing hope. Eventually, through luck, perseverance, and developing new relationships in the local scene, everything fell into place for the album to come out in a way that aligned with Moore’s vision. Now, she feels as if the release will close a five-year cycle within which she dismantled and redeveloped her identity as a musician, arriving at a space of openness and peace.

“I’m in a place where I’m following little strands of interest and completely letting go of every expectation of what I thought I should be doing and what my career needs to be, because it’s hurting my soul to keep doing that: being so ambitious to the point where you’re not questioning it and just hurting yourself,” she says. “What if I just didn’t do that and just enjoyed my life instead? What a novel idea!”

“The record comes out January 17 and that will close this five-year cycle,” she continues. “Then after that, and this hasn’t happened to me in so long, but after that, I have no idea what I’m doing at all. And that is so thrilling to me.”

Marlaena Moore will be performing a Because You Love Everything album launch party with Sasha Cay and Marontate on Jan. 24 2025 at La Sala Rossa.