Q&A with Safeword
Safeword. Photo: Corey Isenor.
On May 17, 2024, four-piece indie rock band Safeword released their third full-length album titled ‘Can’t Hate You Forever.’ The Dartmouth-based features Karen Foster on vocals and keys, Brian Foster on drums, Greg Baller on bass, and Dan Watt on guitar. The band Safeword formed just before the pandemic and has been putting out great music ever since. Catch Safeword at The Seahorse Tavern on June 28, 2024.
How did Safeword form?
Brian, Greg, and I (Karen) played in a band together called Division Street for about a year back in 2012, and then we stopped when two of us had babies and our fourth member, Tyler, moved away. Right before the pandemic, the rest of us re-formed and started playing again, and then brought in Dan. We managed to pump out a few very rough demos before everything shut down. Dan had only played with us a couple of times before we hauled him into the studio to record. Then we played our very first show at Nova Scotia Music Week when it was in Truro. So we really barreled into it headfirst and have just kept going since then. We don’t have any aspirations except making music, playing fun shows with good people, and learning in the process. We’re all at this nice mid-life point where we don’t have anything to prove, and we’re just enjoying contributing to the music scene around here and hopefully helping to build the community. So we say yes to risky stuff–we played the Woodside before it was a real venue, we played at a community centre in Little Harbour, and we’re playing another one in Lawrencetown in June. We like an adventure.
How has your music evolved since your first release?
We learn more about writing, playing and especially recording with every release, so we think each album has gotten better, but also I think we’ve let go of trying to make music other people will like. We just do what feels good and right. As far as our sound goes, people used to tell us that we sound a lot different (and louder) live compared to our first two albums, and on this album, we tried harder to capture the noise and energy of our live performances. Charles Austin, who produced this one, took us to Sonic Temple to try to get a boomier sound on the drums than we’d been able to capture at Ocean Floor, where the rest of the tracks were recorded. Brian and Charles also brought a snare drum to an empty concrete foundation to capture the snare on Young Bud. These are the kinds of things we didn’t spend time on before, and the result is, hopefully, a fuller and more complex sound. The songs sound more like how we hear them in our heads now.
Your last album ‘Currents’ was nominated for Rock Recording of the Year at the Nova Scotia Music Awards. How did it feel to receive that recognition?
It felt good! We never expected to win, especially when we saw who else was nominated, but it was nice to have our effort acknowledged. That same album got recommended to the Polaris judges, too, but I hadn’t been checking the band’s email, so I missed the chance to actually have them hear it. Oh well. Next time, maybe.
What is the inspiration behind the title ‘Can’t Hate You Forever?’
It’s a line from one of the songs on the album (Bear Me in Mind). The full line is, “I can’t hate you forever / so if fate or whatever / brings us back together / we’ll see.” That whole song is about being ready to make up with somebody but preparing to wait until they’re ready, too. I think sometimes people can feel the need to resolve things immediately instead of just being patient and trusting that if you’re meant to be friends or lovers, you’ll find each other again. It’s a reminder that there’s nothing wrong with taking a beat sometimes.
Your music often touches on social and political issues. How do you see the role of music and art in addressing these issues?
People in our band have been directly involved in politics (big P and little p) and know firsthand that it gets exhausting and sometimes you need to check out and not be so serious. Music and art can sometimes be more playful or sneaky than other kinds of outputs, so they can seed ideas in a way that crosses boundaries or turns things upside down and allows people to engage with them. Like if we can tell a story about the consolidation of property into the hands of fewer and fewer people, while also making you dance a little, you’ll probably listen longer than if we were just lecturing you about it. Plus, it’s an outlet for us!
Was there anything in particular that inspired you to address the housing crisis through the song ‘Jane’?
Seeing entire city blocks of colourful old homes razed to become parking lots in the middle of a housing crisis inspired us. All of us are happy to see Halifax diversifying and growing, and we accept that living in a city means that change is inevitable. But it can be done in ways that benefit the majority of ordinary people, or it can be done in ways that make a few rich guys even richer, and the latter is what we see happening. Jane Jacobs wrote about the process of gentrification–the way creatives move to a place because of cheaper rents, which attracts money because it’s cool and trendy, but then it kinda ruins it for the people who actually live there and participate in the real scene. That doesn’t negate that there are all kinds of really great urban planners who want to create awesome neighbourhoods. If anything, we’re on their side, and we realize that they’re also up against big moneyed interests that just want to make the most of their investments and don’t really give a damn what life is like in the buildings they finance.
How does it feel to have the latest record come together and be released?
We were really intentional about the sound we wanted this time, and made sure we were really happy with it before we sent it off for mastering. But it is hard to wait for a release–you re-listen to the mixes and start to doubt yourself, so that in-between time kinda sucks. Now that it’s out, it’s a relief. We are really humbled by the feedback we’re hearing, and hoping this one gets heard by a lot of people. That might seem like the opposite of not caring what people think, but it’s not. We hope you like it, but we wouldn’t have done it any differently. Beyond that, we are just excited to get back to working on the next album.
What do you want your listeners to take away from the new album?
We hope they find something they like and are hooked enough to follow us and wait for more new stuff, maybe come to a show if they’ve never been. As the songwriter, I hope people find some resonance in the lyrics–they’re not teenage hookup or breakup songs because we’ve got more life experience than that, but we hope they’re relatable.
Would you like to add anything about the new album, your creative process, or your upcoming plans?
We should plug our next big show: we’re playing the Seahorse for the first time on June 28th with Human Missile Crisis, Souvenir and several more bands, and advance tickets are just $10. But beyond that, we want to hype up the awesome music ecosystem in and around Halifax. First and foremost, Charles Austin is a gem, and we don’t deserve him! He spent time helping us work out what the songs should sound like and how to get that sound in the studio, and he seems to get what we’re trying to do. That said, we would keep him around during recording just for his running commentary. And actually, there were times during mixing that Charles had to tell us to stay home because otherwise we just talked the whole time. Franc Lopes at Oceanfloor is so hardworking and talented (and has kept us all on track), and together with Charles, he’s created a vital, welcoming, and accessible space for recording in this city. We valued being able to spend band money there and at Sonic Temple, which is also a breathtaking space. We’ve met so many cool people through music–we found forYOU Records, and they’re making us some t-shirts; we found Katie Wayne, who’s on deck to remix a Safeword song or two in future; we’ve now got enough musician buds around the province, and beyond that, we hope to do a little tour soon. The community and the fun are what we care about the most.
