artist Rae Spoon

Rae Spoon is a transgendered musician and author who lives in Montreal. They have toured extensively over the past twelve years in Canada as well as internationally (Europe, the USA and Australia). Having started out as a country artist and later composed more experimental/electronic material, Rae has always kept songwriting at the forefront of their music.

I Can’t Keep All Of Our Secrets is Rae’s most recent release. A pop/electronic album about the complexity of grief, it focuses on a particular experience of loss—Rae wrote the album in the wake of a friend’s sudden death. With palpable emotion, the songs map the topography of loss and of attachment that extends beyond death. Musically, I Can’t Keep All Of Our Secrets is Rae’s most electronic album to date. Its heavily programmed production, analog synths and distorted electric guitars mark Rae’s musical progress from electronic experimentation to the establishment of their own style in the genre. The album features computer programming and beats by Lynne T (Montreal’s Lesbians on Ecstasy) and Berlin’s Alexandre Decoupigny. It was co-produced by Lorrie Matheson in Calgary, Alberta.

Rae’s first book, First Spring Grass Fire, is to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in September 2012. The book, which honours the brief moments of hope for a world outside of the narrator’s evangelical family, is a collection of short stories heavily inspired by coming of age queer in Alberta. Through realizing they must escape where they are from, the book’s narrator begins a journey towards finding acceptance and a safe home.

Rae was long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize in 2008 (superioryouareinferior) as well as nominated for two CBC Radio 3 Bucky Awards in 2010. They won the CBC Galaxie Rising Stars award in 2004. Rae’s personal essay Femme Cowboy can be found in the 2012 Lambda Literary Award–nominated anthology Persistence.