Mackenzie Shivers recently released her fourth full-length album, primrose was in season, working again with frequent collaborator Kevin Salem (Rachel Yamagata, Emmylou Harris) as Producer, and the collection shows Shivers’ continual push into new and interesting blends of acoustic and electronic elements. The album is one of dynamic contrasts, both in terms of sounds and themes, as Shivers created the album in the wake of losing her first pregnancy and then experiencing the birth of her first child.
The album is not about these experiences in a direct way, but the emotional peaks and valleys we find in these songs suggest a period of change and questioning that is highly relatable. Rather, Shivers was inspired by wide-ranging material for these songs, from the poignancy of Tudor-era drama to big ideas about fate and human control. And being in the studio, bringing the songs to life, actually acted as a joyful place for Shivers to follow her intuition about how the songs should grow and evolve, prompted by Salem’s seemingly off-the-wall ideas that turned out to be just right. I spoke with Mackenzie Shivers about her most expressive album yet and why it’s actually an album that she enjoys listening to.
Hannah Means-Shannon: Looking through your past couple releases, I see continual pushing forward and change. What I’m seeing with primrose was in season is an even further process of pushing forward into new sounds and ideas.
Mackenzie Shivers: Thank you. I feel like that’s what I’ve done, too, but it’s been less of a conscious decision than doing what feels right and exciting to me in the studio. As long as it’s something new and different for me, personally, that I’ve never done before, that’s what excites me. It’s a melding of electric and acoustic, and playing around with Production in general. It’s not like no one’s done it before, but I haven’t explored this avenue of using more electronic drumbeats and samples.
Traditionally, I’ve done much more straight-ahead acoustic music, and played a lot live in the studio. I really like that avenue as well. With Rejection Letter, I had a different approach and created things from the ground up in the studio, which was partly due to Covid, by necessity, but I ended up really liking it. I was having fun. Then we kept going with that for this album. Kevin Salem and I, who produced this album with me, will keep going in that direction, I think, until it’s not exciting anymore or it’s not working anymore. We’ll keep going until we want to change it.
It’s great to have someone like Kevin as a continuity point because he can comment on changes as they come up and notice developments.
Totally. We just tracked a new song together and it was another instance of just the two of us in the studio, which is how most of this album was made. He made the same comment, “I think we just keep going this way until it’s not going where we want it to.” It’s so nice to be on the same page with someone and speak the same musical language. It makes the whole process that much richer.
There were a lot of times on this album where Kevin would push the sound in directions that I hadn’t really been before. All the songs came in as piano and vocals. Usually, he would say, “I have this wild idea! I don’t know if you’re going to like it!” But those always ended up being my favorite ideas.
That’s what he said when I played him “johnny gown.” He said he had a crazy idea for that drumbeat and that synth-like sound. It’s actually not a synth at all, it’s him playing the electric guitar. It just sounds like a synth and he morphed it. I said, “I want it to sound like this! This is perfect!” We just went for it. That’s how the sound of the album came about.
I think there are little accents of more dramatic contrasts within the songs than I’ve seen on past albums. That song, “johnny gown”, is the poster child for that feature! It’s almost like a New Wave song. Of course, a lot of people are talking about The Cure right now and feeling nostalgia for that period. But I think it’s reawakened some of that dramatic sensibility.
I love that you mention The Cure and New Wave because that’s really a sound that I had in my head when we were making this. I was listening to a lot of Talking Heads and I was also listening to a lot of modern bands who I feel like are influenced by that era in terms of Production, like Hand Habits and Half-Waif. These are groups I love. I think it’s fun and brings an adventurous spirit to things.
I like how that kind of music dramatizes internal states in a kind of bold way, which affects storytelling, too. The vocals on “johnny gown” really highlight how each song on the album has a pretty different vocal style. That song is almost operatic in places.
It is true that we approach each song, and the vocals on every song, distinctively and that’s very intentional. Especially with a song like “johnny gown”, though, I started worrying and getting self-conscious about it. I wondered if the vocals were too ethereal or operatic. But I decided that this song and the Production on the vocals was a true mark of me and I wanted to stand behind it. I really love it! But I had this moment of being nervous.
What works about those sounds and those lyrics is that the lyrics are an admission of darker things. They work together really well. I think it’s a great direction.
There are a lot of things that I’d like to do. There are many genres and styles that I’ve been drawn to, and in different seasons of my life, I’ll probably try different things. But this approach of marrying the adventurous or even upbeat Production with the confessional, sad, or even bitter-sweet lyrics was wanting to let loose in the studio and let myself have fun.
That was a period of my life where I was not having a lot of fun outside the studio, so it was a place where I could just come in, sing at my own Rock show, dance around, and it felt really good. Then I realized, “This album is not one I want to be a “Sad” album. I don’t want it to be something that I can’t listen to later.” That’s what it’s turned into. I’m really excited that it’s something I enjoy listening back to. The whole process has been extraordinarily cathartic and has been filled with a lot of joy, which surprised me.
I want to bring up the imagery for this album and the videos because there’s a lot of consistency here. We have a lot of flowers. There’s the natural world, of course. But there’s also a medieval or Tudor feel to things. That time period was really obsessed with calendars and seasons. When did all that imagery start for you?
I love that you mention the Tudor era. That was such an inspiration for “A Cautionary Tale”, and I think there’s such a beauty and a darkness about that time of history. But it really started for me when I was watching a show called A Spanish Princess on STARZ about Catherine of Aragon. I found her really fascinating and inspiring, and the show really breaks down her marriage to King Henry VIII. They had a son who died young and she had many miscarriages. Her one living child was Queen Mary later on. I felt that their portrayal of her and what she went through was so well done and a lot of care was taken with it. I was so moved by this, considering that this album stemmed from my own miscarriage and loss. That was definitely the catalyst for this whole album.
I wanted those ideas to be the inspiration for the music video, and I spoke to Sara Haile about it, who directed the music video, and she was excited about it too. That’s why we brought in those touches with the costuming and the flowers. Some of the flowers are red and white roses, which are representatives of the Tudor houses. There are other little touches woven in there.
Now I’m thinking about the lyrics of that song again, and I tend to take them in a modern way in the sense of a person struggling with ideas of fate or destiny. It questions how much power we have in the outcome. But when you bring in the Tudor stuff, there’s a lot of drama to that time period and we have more information about their lives. It’s a time when people were both villains and saints. If you put this song in the role of someone from that period, like Catherine, you can see how they might be talking about their own fate hanging in the balance.
There were all kinds of stories about Catherine, that she had put a curse on Henry, and there were rumors about her. I think those ideas of fate and destiny come into play with that story. During that time period, people really wanted to rise in the ranks at court, and be in the King’s favor. But everyone who rose up had a target on their backs! I would’ve just wanted to keep my head down.
We have some interesting locations for the videos for this album, too. We have open grasslands, we have a castle-like structure for “johnny gown.” Were you thinking about the contrast with the natural world and the human world?
I feel like this album, and therefore some of the imagery, is really leaning into those dichotomies of pain and joy, and magic and grief. I think that it’s all in there. For “johnny gown”, I always saw that video in black and white. I don’t really know why, it’s just kind of a vibe. I think that song in particular does really embrace that melancholy where excitement and joy blend back together. I think things in black and white are also harmonious and beautiful. With aesthetics and imagery, I always go off of my gut and what feels right to me. When we were going through the colorization of “a cautionary tale”, we wanted contrast between the blue dress and the flowers and have a kind of fantasy vibe. Then the beige suit and the studio are zeroing more into reality.
But I do love visuals. I have a lot of fun working with other people on them and I have some friends who are wildly talented on the videos and the design. I work with them, but I give them some ideas and let them run. The studio is my favorite part of an album, but after that, it’s the visuals.
Is the album title something that relates to flower lore, like something from the Tudor period?
It’s from lyrics in one of the songs. Primrose, in particular, is known for its healing properties. It’s one of the first blooms in spring. It’s these vibrant flowers even in the middle of winter. That, to me, just felt like the album title. I had a hard time coming up with the album title this time. Usually, I know right away what it’s going to be, but this time it took a long time. But this felt like the right thing that I wanted to say about the album. I’ve also never picked a lyric for a title before.
I also noticed that lilies come up in the song “terracotta floors”, so it’s not a strong overbearing theme, but you’ve scattered flowers around on this album.
Yes, exactly! I’ve scattered them around, scattered the seeds. I wrote that song when we were moving between Queens and the Hudson Valley and there was this patch of Lily of the Valley that had just sprung up. I was having a hard time transitioning in between places and these flowers would keep popping up in our yard, things I’d never seen before! Because I’d been living in the city for so long and I’d never had my own backyard. The lilies filled me with this sense of comfort and inspiration. Now gardening is one of my favorite things and to me, it’s like being in the studio, planting things and seeing what sticks.
