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The Strange and Beautiful World of Okay Kaya
The enigmatic artist brings her signature storytelling to new depths with Oh My God – That’s So Me.
by Madeline Lines
Photos by Youna Baupoux
- Published on
Okay Kaya casts a hush over Montreal’s Fairmount Theatre, the cozy mid-size venue hiding in plain sight above a grocery store in the city’s Mile End. Normally you could feel the floor give and bounce under your feet, threatening to dump everyone into the fish section below. This crowd however was under a still trance, save for a bit of light swaying, captivated by Kaya Wilkins’ quiet command.
Standing at the helm of a strange ship, the Norwegian-American singer blushes in front of a buzzing audience that often interrupts her shy candor to cheer, unable to contain their encouragement. It’s night two of her Oh My God – That’s So Me tour, a run that kicked off with a livelier New York show in a rollerskating rink.
“That night in Montreal felt more intimate, like a back and forth conversation,” says Wilkins on a call from her hotel room in Toronto a few days later. The model slash musician is just as open as she was on stage that night, often tucking in her lips in thought and laughing freely. Wilkins is all about painting a strange picture with words and sound, always has been – and this latest album, her fourth, digs deeper into that than ever before.
“With this record, I started thinking about stories that had really influenced me the past year or two or however long, and wrote a lot of songs based on that,” says Wilkins. “When I read fiction, I kind of feel closer to this sort of humanity. Whether it’s like a myth or other fiction, it just seems to sum up human existence in a way that maybe nonfiction can’t.”
In the ode to the Moomin figure of loneliness, “The Grok,” Wilkins channeled living and creating in isolation and the cold Norwegian winters of her childhood. Then, looked to “My Berenice,” an ode to an Edgar Allan Poe short story she was tickled by.
“The guy in the story gets super obsessed with his wife’s teeth, and his wife passes away, and so he goes to her grave and digs her up and puts her teeth in a box so she so he can continue gazing upon them,” Wilkins explains.
A talented and strikingly vivid songwriter, Wilkins is more than capable of weaving her own tales without needing a reference – but this new album being in conversation with other whimsical works adds a layer of depth and dynamism that makes it even juicier. The album’s title, “Oh My God – That’s So Me,” refracts through in many ways, including in a song where she imagines the first ever poet looking at the moon and exclaiming the namesake album title.
To me, the title instantly conjures the internet and the way we relate to the world, and ourselves, through sending each other and (seeing ourselves in) media. Wilkins understands this and mentions how, when living on a remote island, exchanging memes with far-away friends was a necessary means of connection.
Isolation and aloneness is a theme that emerges more than once in our conversation, and it’s Wilkin’s singular vision and process that has allowed such a unique vision to shine through unmuddied. Her most known song, “Mother Nature’s Bitch,” is hard to forget – a playful tune with a deeper voice and a mischievous soundscape. This album maintains her esoteric core over a pared-down, string-heavy sound.
Still, among all this, there are crucial threads buoying her to shore and to other people. Wilkins recalls how she didn’t always enjoy performing, but was told something by friend and fellow musician Aerial East that has changed her approach to being on stage. “I was talking about performing and how it’s kind of terrifying to be on stage sometimes, and she said to me, ‘Well, I just remember that I love to sing.’ And now, when I’m up there, I have Aerial’s voice in my head to ground me,” says Wilkins.
In closing, I wonder what makes Wilkins think, “Oh my god, that’s so me,” these days. She obliges.
“Today I saw a black squirrel with a nut, zooming incredibly fast crossing the street as I was doing my 10 minutes of walking around in the morning,” says Wilkins. “What else… It’s been a lot of lichen, moss, and nature stuff, because I live on an island. Nature and memes.”
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