Brat Star isn't quite the brat her name suggests. “I’m the opposite of that as a person. I’m so serious, sensitive and shy,” says the Montreal-born musician, speaking over a video call from Toronto. The “lame nickname” is a holdover from her teenage years that followed her into her early career as a DJ. But brat aside, she’s ready to live up to the other half of her name with the release of her debut album, Southern Ontario Gothic, out today.
Protagonists have always had a place in Brat Star’s life. Growing up in Montreal, M.L. (the initials of her real name) spent much of her childhood absorbed in stories, watching a movie a day and imagining herself in the lives of its characters. “I knew I wanted to make music and be a performer [after] watching Britney Spears' ‘Stronger’ video,” she recalls. “I was always obsessed with art and music that transforms hard emotions into power.”
Throughout our conversation, she drops references to films and characters so freely that I find myself mentally adding titles to my Letterboxd watchlist, until eventually I concede that I’m way out of my depth. “I’m more influenced by movies in my songwriting than by anything else,” she tells me. “I want my songs to be as exciting as a Tarantino movie.” Those references come thick and fast on Southern Ontario Gothic, a self-produced electronic pop record that speedruns left-field subjects through Brat Star’s deadpan delivery, with tracks named after director David Fincher and “Margot Tenenbaum”, a character in Wes Anderon’s The Royal Tenenbaums.
For all her preoccupation with main characters, however, becoming one herself was something M.L. spent years trying to avoid. Both her parents were artists, and watching them struggle financially convinced her to pursue a more stable career. She made it as far as a law firm before deciding to quit. “I was scared I’d realise I’m an artist, and I have to be an artist,” she admits. “And that was gonna be so fucking hard.”
In a plotline befitting a 2020s indie biopic, M.L. headed to Berlin, where she landed a job at 032c, continued DJing and began experimenting with music production on Ableton, a programme that would later lend its name to one of her tracks. She likens this period to Uma Thurman’s training montage in Kill Bill, when her character undergoes the gruelling tutelage of a martial arts master. By 2020, she had released her first EP, Voice Notes, only to abandon the project shortly afterwards.
It took a few more years, a stint with The Artist's Way and a chance encounter with S-tier music producer Mechatok on a flight for her to reconsider. “I was just so struck by how specific his thing was, and I think that was a big influence for me as I was starting out,” she explains. She found further encouragement in musicians like Loukeman, Ian Mills and her now-husband Dyltwosix, who together formed the Toronto-based collective Stardog. “I think meeting all these people really awakened my desire to be an artist,” she recalls. “I remember thinking all these people are artists and they’re fine. They’re doing great. So maybe I can do it too.”
Elsewhere on the record, she sings about dirty Hokas, White Claws, Apple headphones and countless other references to consumer culture. She traces her interest in these unlikely subjects back to discovering Andy Warhol, whose work convinced her that just about anything could be worthy of artistic obsession. “In this day and age, brands kind of operate as gods or spiritual entities,” she says. “They mythologise themselves, and I’m so into that process.”
Brat Star takes an almost method-acting approach to songwriting, borrowing from people she’s encountered and characters she’s observed online to imagine the world from their perspective. “White Claw Addict”, for instance, was partly inspired by a late-night scroll through Instagram bios, when she noticed that everyone seemed “drunk on identity”. Elsewhere, “Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique”– another reference to Kill Bill – imagines the frustrations of a teenage boy watching people barely older than him become internet famous.
Taken together, these stories form what she describes as a “little hero’s journey”. The album is named after Southern Ontario Gothic, a literary tradition associated with writers like Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, where dark subject matter and dry humour often go hand in hand. Brat Star is similarly happy to dwell in these darker recesses in her own songwriting. “I think humour allows for deeper things to be discussed,” she explains. “You can stick the knife in a little deeper.”
For all its darker moments, Brat Star considers Southern Ontario Gothic an optimistic record. You might not guess that from its cover, featuring a steel-like insignia splattered with blood, designed by Dyltwosix and inspired by Silent Hill, X-Men and action-movie logos. “In my mind, my album is really positive,” she laughs. “But also I look at it, and I’m like, ‘wait, but there’s blood, and it’s dark.’ Sometimes I think you have to go to the darkest depths to find the light.” Stars, after all, are born from collapse.