Biography
Canadian singer/songwriter Kathryn Calder had already issued two EPs and four albums alongside the Victoria-based indie rock outfit Immaculate Machine before she stepped into a more prominent role with the New Pornographers. During her teenage years she learned that the band’s frontman Carl Newman was in fact her long-lost uncle, a connection revealed when her mother—who had been adopted—located her birth mother and discovered she was also Newman’s mother. Newman invited her on a whim to substitute for co-vocalist Neko Case, whose solo career was rapidly gaining momentum, and Calder joined the group’s touring lineup as vocalist and keyboardist.
She soon contributed to the New Pornographers’ recordings as well, beginning with the 2005 album Twin Cinema, and formally parted ways with Immaculate Machine in 2008. Two years afterward she issued her first solo effort, the ten-track set Are You My Mother?, a collection of D.I.Y. indie pop and folk recorded in Victoria, British Columbia, while she tended to her terminally ill mother. The following year brought her second album, Bright and Vivid, which included appearances by singer/songwriter Ford Pier, violinist Jesse Zubot, and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster. In 2012 she began filming the documentary A Matter of Time, which documented the period she spent caring for her mother, who later succumbed to ALS. Amid the New Pornographers’ demanding schedule she managed to complete a third studio album, co-produced with her husband Colin Stewart and issued as a self-titled release on File Under: Music in April 2015.
She soon contributed to the New Pornographers’ recordings as well, beginning with the 2005 album Twin Cinema, and formally parted ways with Immaculate Machine in 2008. Two years afterward she issued her first solo effort, the ten-track set Are You My Mother?, a collection of D.I.Y. indie pop and folk recorded in Victoria, British Columbia, while she tended to her terminally ill mother. The following year brought her second album, Bright and Vivid, which included appearances by singer/songwriter Ford Pier, violinist Jesse Zubot, and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster. In 2012 she began filming the documentary A Matter of Time, which documented the period she spent caring for her mother, who later succumbed to ALS. Amid the New Pornographers’ demanding schedule she managed to complete a third studio album, co-produced with her husband Colin Stewart and issued as a self-titled release on File Under: Music in April 2015.
Albums
