Vagabon interview: "The reason that I want to hold space in the music industry is so that other people like me can follow."

Lætitia Tamko has just released the self-titled second album from her musical project Vagabon. Coming two years after the break-out success of Infinite Worlds, Tamko’s new record was written largely on the road in support of her debut. It was a situation that tested her emotionally, and largely informed the emotional core of Vagabon, seeing her come out the other side more confident than ever.

In her open-hearted songwriting Tamko is fully exposing her struggles, but on Vagabon it comes with newfound courage in her production skills that allow her to express the assured woman beneath. This added poise is evident right from the astonishing cover of Vagabon, which is where we started our conversation.

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Let's start with the album cover, because I need to know how that came about. Who were you shooting with? How did you decide to use that one as the cover?

I kind of set up this elaborate two-day long experiment, and so for two days I just shot with my good friend Tonje Thilesen, who's an amazing Norwegian photographer. We had worked together in the past here and there and I knew specifically her work is really great in film, and I wanted to shoot the album in film.

All the looks were custom; the hat was custom. We just kind of made our own thing, we made a vision board, I worked with this stylist (also a friend of mine), worked with all women on the cover and of the lay out of the vinyl.

The photo that became the cover was not originally what I thought would be the cover; on the end of the second day I just asked if we could shoot this specific look, which was just the hat and a black top. Everyone was just like "okay okay whatever let's just hurry up and do this". At the end it ended up being the most striking.

I wanted to work with very specific colours on this album, so I already knew that royal blue was a strong colour for this record, and would follow it throughout the campaign. So when we saw that photo I was like "whoa, this has to be it". Everyone else had different ideas, but ultimately I make the decisions [laughs]. I chose that photo because it perfectly shows the fatigue that I identified with so much, but also the confidence that I identified with so much on this album as well.

Very cool. Tell me more about how the colours relate to the album.

I was thinking about cohesiveness throughout the record, because it felt like it wasn't cohesive at all in sounds or genres, so I just wanted to have a fixed thing and that ended up being the colour. I had been really drawn to royal blue, and this album is about confidence and coming out of your shell and coming out of timidness, coming out of making yourself small in order to make yourself more digestible to people. I wanted to pick a colour that was bold and striking and played on not afraid of being loud now, that's how we can up with that bright orange and the royal blue.

I don't know if I would have necessarily thought this was a confident album, there's a lot of vulnerability on here, but is that part of the confidence, being able to show your vulnerability now?

Absolutely. It's something that I do very well; I'm open about my life to a fault sometimes. Infinite Worlds was all vulnerable, but through the lens of fragility. That's something I very much relate to, it's something I've been in my entire life.

Vagabon is still that vulnerability, it's still walking into all those difficult feelings and still being very honest with yourself even if it's embarrassing, but through the lens of triumph and through the lens of confidence. I think being able to walk into your feeling is a very powerful thing, and being able to admit when you're not an ideal person and when you're not an ideal friend, or when you're not being good to yourself. I think being able to admit that is pretty confident, because it allows you to move from that in a way that is actually productive.

As you said, this album is almost genre-less, it's hard to put it into a box. It shifts with your moods.

I write music when I'm needing to work out a difficult feeling. I've not reached a place where I can write happy songs - whatever that means - but I think the difference with this record is that I was experimenting a lot with my production hand and production brain.

But of course when I reach to write music it's because I'm feeling fraught or sad or pensive or introspective, just thinking about difficult stuff. In songs like 'Water Me Down' I'm talking about something pretty difficult, but I'm also not feeling like I'm going to die; through the textures that I choose to use I'm relaying that I'm gonna be okay.

Awesome. You mentioned your production hand, did you have any particular goals or influences or was it going on instinct?

It was going on instinct. I have a brain that is bursting with things that it wants to do and things that I want to explore, so during this time I'm not really listening to much music. In these early stages I'm just trying to get the most organic part of my brain out on to a piece of paper, so I try not crowd my brain with a lot of other sounds. I'm sure that I'm influenced by things that I've heard throughout my life, but it isn't a specific thing that I can pinpoint.

I know what a song needs, I have a very clear vision of how I want my songs to sound and how I want to produce them and what I need for them. At this point in my career I'm not searching for inspiration, I'm just excited to get to put these ideas on a piece of paper.

You like to sing about "I" and "you" a lot, even though the feelings aren't always specifically about anyone, how does that help you to express these deeper feelings?

I first started writing songs at a really dark time in my life when I was asking myself a lot of personal questions, so my songs became very personal. The songs on Infinite Worlds were very much pointing the arrow at me, or writing the songs from the perspective of someone I encountered and wondering what just went through their head or why they said this. My songs tend to be a recalling of experiences that I've had, but it isn't always recalling it from my perspective.

Vagabon starts with 'Full Moon in Gemini', I don't know anything about astrology so what does that mean?

A full moon is something very intense; it's a night for something new to arise. A Gemini is something two-sided, very indecisive; when you think of a Gemini you think of a cat with two heads or something. The song was actually written on a full moon in Gemini.

I wanted to start the record with that because of the newness of this record, which a full moon signifies. It's kind of like a statement of what you're about to hear for the next however many minutes.

Very nice. I love the arrangements on it, how did you work those out?

I've had this song kicking around for a while, I made the beat for it very early and I was playing it on synthesizers. A really dear person to me, Oliver Hill, is an incredible string player and arranger, so I sat with him and he basically translated my synth notes into strings. It was a texture that for once I had available to me which I've never had before; I never knew how to play orchestral instruments.

I got together a string trio, violin viola and cello to basically support those synth lines, and it becomes almost like a sonic lament of sorts. I wanted to do a juxtaposition with these orchestral instruments and a sequenced drum part.

Well it sounds great! 'Flood' comes next and it was the first single and it had that big synth sound that we hadn't heard from you before, was that part of the decision to put it out first?

I made it the first single because it was the first song that I did fully by myself for this record. It almost shocked me; it was like "oh shit I actually like this.” I've come a long way from just being on YouTube figuring out how to make Logic work. It was more impressive to me. Ir was my coming out, it was like this is what I've been doing for the last two years and it feels really good to have something that broke the mould of me. It was the first song to let me know that I can fully produce this record and it could be as adventurous as I wanted it to be.

I haven't been able to decide if the main hook "even if I run from it I'm still in it" is comforting or unsettling?

In writing it it was an uncomfortable feeling, because if you're trying to escape something you want to succeed [in getting away]. I wrote that song in July of 2017, it's the oldest song on the record, but I think now, today, it's very much a comforting feeling, because being able to walk into your shit is very important to me.

I have to ask the obvious question about 'Secret Medicine': what is the secret medicine?

The secret medicine is patience. The secret medicine only comes to those who wait. It's very much about not being hasty, which I am wont to be sometimes, especially in volatile inter-personal relationships. I can be very hasty to make a move. So 'Secret Medicine' is about accepting a moment and waiting it out and seeing what happens.

Very cool. What is "going low" in this scenario?

It's about stooping down to the lowest level to meet the other person; being self-destructive for the sake of this other person who brings out this bad of you, this very unstable part of you.

Do you feel like you understand these situations better after you've written songs?

Definitely, I think that when I write these songs and when I've finished it I feel like I've talked it out with a friend, it's out of me. That's important. When something rattles me up in some way shape or form, I need to eject it from my body and start the processing. I'm not down for the holding things in, for concealing things. All my songs have been in service of getting to the healing, so it's important to say them out loud and acknowledge them.

You can practically hear that transformation in 'Water Me Down', you go from this low point to coming out the other side, especially when the drums hit.

Through writing these songs it's the first time I've felt like "something bad's happened - but I'm not gonna die." If you're a person with anxiety you're constantly feeling like the world's ending.

'Water Me Down' is the most confident song I've been able to write, and to me it's a continuation of 'Secret Medicine'; same scenario, same things. In 'Secret Medicine' I came back around knowing that person would wreck my shit all over again, but in 'Water Me Down' it's reconciling like "I never meant for all of this and I don't want any of this." It's a constant processing and 'Water Me Down' is the ending period of a feeling; I was self-destructive on 'Secret Medicine' but I made it out and I'm good and I'm dancing on 'Water Me Down'.

You go from that peak to 'In A Bind', which is maybe the lowest point on the record. "My body's gone awry and my love is in a bind" is such a powerful hook in that song, but what does it mean for your body to go awry?

That's back to self-destruction. It's being on tour; that song is a lot about inter-personal relationships going wrong because you're not there. It's like "I know I've been gone for a long time but I thought you'd still be here, I thought you understood".

I was feeling very weary, I'd been touring for two years non-stop, and my touring friends understand but a lot of people... I can't hold a relationship, I'm so busy and worn down - even though I'm doing this amazing thing. So "my body's gone awry" is like I'm so tired, I don't even know what is what at this point, I'm just living for tour. I can't be there to nurture my relationships and my friends, it’s reconciling with that, asking myself if I'm a bad friend.

The backing vocals in that song play an important part of expressing that feeling, when did you have the inspiration to add those?

I always wanted to have a choir on that song since the moment I wrote it. It was really difficult to find a choir, especially as I was moving around a lot, and I made this album a lot alone and I was like "I don't know how to record a choir, I don't know how to record that many people."

So I had given up on that idea until the very last day of recording it popped into my head that my friend Taylor Simone Harvey is an amazing singer who can do so many things and so many voices. I called her up and luckily she was in LA where I was recording this last track. She came into the studio and gave me twenty versions of "uh huh, yes" and I just picked the ones that made the most sense, that honoured the idea in my brain. So I just made my own one-person choir with Taylor.

That’s amazing! Let's go on to 'Wits About You', which changes in tone half way through, what's happening in that moment?

I wrote that little part, "I was invited to the party/ they won't let my people in," because I thought the record was pretty light-sounding. There are records that beg for your emotional self, when you turn it on you know you're going to be poked and your heart is going to jabbed at, and I felt like compared to my last record this record was very light-sounding.

I still want it to be very clear what my intention in this music industry space is. I felt like throughout the record I'd just been talking about myself in a way that was fine - it's my art and it's my process - but that little break in 'Wits About You' is to stop the record, bring it down to basics and to let the listeners know what I'm about.

“They won't let my people in then never mind," it's kind of my way of showing that I'm very angry about gatekeepers and people who reach a certain level and don't know their community anymore. The reason that I want to hold space in the music industry is so that other people like me can follow, so I want to let everyone who's listening to this to know that this is ultimately what I'm about.

The best thing that can come from any type of power in the music industry is to pass it on. This is for all the artists that hit me up and are like "I don't know what to do about this, I'm a black woman playing guitar and I can't get booked at my local whatever." I relate to that so much. The point is that all the power that I acquire in making music is in the hope of bringing up of other people, because otherwise it feels masturbatory and weird.

So that's what I mean by "I don't wanna go to you function," because if you don't want to let all the people that I look like in then none of us will be here and we'll just go do our own thing.

Wow, awesome. That's a lot to pack into half a song. On a seemingly more trivial note, is 'Please Don't Leave the Table' to be taken literally?

It really is a literal visual, because then the song continues like "my plate is full, but I see you motion towards the sink." It's a very visual depiction of being left behind, being too slow. That's what it means for me.

I see. And the Destiny's Child ‘Say My Name’ quote, is that just a detail of that moment?

At the time I forgot where that came from, it was just a random in the studio moment. This song was kind of a collage, all the parts were written at different times and played with at different times.

So the horn part was one of those pieces.

Exactly. Again this comes back to access, I never had access to someone who knew how to play a French horn or a trumpet, but then all of a sudden my close friends are able to do those things. So I had Sasami and Melina [Duterte aka Jay Som] come in and do French horn and trumpet over the synth part to add body to it and let it be this hook that you remember when the song's over.

Very cool. 'Home Soon' comes next; as someone who made a big move early in their life and is out touring a lot, home must have a more abstract meaning. What is it in this song?

'Home Soon' is really about being at home in your body, which is something that I'm still trying to figure out.

But also I haven't been to my actual home in Cameroon in 10 years, and everything I hear is "when are you coming home? When are you coming home?" and just thinking about going to all these places around the world except where I'm from. I'm trying to reconcile that and I'm feeling kind of guilty and I'm feeling a little bit lost, because I haven't been home in so long, so that song is a lyrical exploration of that.

Then we go on to 'Every Woman', which is kind of the centrepiece of the album but you put practically at the end. Does that play into the feeling of exhaustion that the song describes?

I wanted to put it at the end because I wanted it to be a ‘closing statements’ kind of thing. I wanted to do something that the listener leaves with. It offers a more generous listen because it's so quiet, it's just guitar, it's very raw, there's not much to it.

Even though it is a simple song I just want to live in that sound, but then it ends so suddenly and snaps you out of it. What was the thinking there?

I want you, the listener, to rewind it. I want you to go back and listen to it again. I didn't want the feeling of the end of that song to be satisfied. I didn't want someone to be like "Okay, I get it." When I talk about generous listens I'm talking about you going back and picking something new every time.

In that song you sing "we're not afraid of the war we're taking on"; tell me about the wars you're fighting.

I say "the women" in that song, because I identify as a cis woman, but it's not to be limited to that. Everyone who hears that song knows who it's meant for and knows what it's meant to say.

My song is of frustration and the failure to recognise that whether it's immigrants, whether it's black people, people of colour, this country that I'm living in now has been utilising those people a great deal for a very long time. Through this song I am very much trying to understand how to talk about what's going on right now.

Amazing. I can see why you wanted that to be the final closing thought. Although, you do end with a reprise of 'Full Moon in Gemini', is that to do with things going in cycles?

I wanted to book-end the record with the same song, and I originally wanted it to be different versions of the song, but then I became curious about how my songs sound with another person singing it. A lot of these songs are autobiographical or about my life in some way, and I wanted to see the effect it would have on me and on the listeners to hear the exact same song sung by a different person.

So I experimented with that and I was really happy with the way that the reprise that Monako did came out. I wanted to flex my songwriting muscles a little bit and I think that it was good to see that a song that I wrote can still hold up using a whole different voice.

So who is Monako, who you've got singing there?

Monako is a band from Hamburg, Germany and they're one of my favourite bands ever; they're incredible.

Very cool. That concludes the album. Before you go I want to know what are the plans for the live show?

When I come to Europe in October I'll be performing solo, which is really gonna be a wild time [laughs], but when I come back on my headline tour next year I'll bring a band. For the shows in the US we're beginning to get that sorted out, and it's really fun to have more material to play and it's really fun to play with SPDs and to work guitar into some of these new songs, to explore how to bring this new album to life. It's been really fun to figure out.

Lastly, do you have any books to recommend?

I would recommend this book Bone, by Ysra Daley-Ward, she's an English writer. I'm really drawn to poetry by black women, and this book speaks about our experiences that makes me feel taken care of and watched and loved. I would recommend it to anyone, because it's about the magic that black female writers are possessing. She's brilliant, in my opinion.

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Vagabon’s new album Vagabon is out now on Nonesuch Records.

This article was originally published on The 405 - 21st October 2019.