Show Notes
Short version Tori Forsyth talks about her outstanding fourth album, Self Preservation, a collection of country and rock songs full of power and whimsy that will take the top off your head in the best possible way.
Long version While this interview for Tori Forsyth’s fourth album, Self Preservation, was formally arranged and we spoke at the appointed hour, Tori and I have had several off-the-record conversations since the first time I interviewed her, for her third album, All We Have Is Who We Are, in 2024. When I wrote my questions for that interview I had an instinct – based on research – to take them in a certain direction and that led to us discussing creativity more broadly. Later, she interviewed me on her own podcast.
So that’s the context for why this new interview may sound less formal in places, and why I ask questions of Tori that I may not of other artists. It’s partly because I know, from her music and from speaking to her, that she is always willing to dig out the marrow of things and have a good look at what it’s made of – and that she will do this to her own beliefs and experiences and dreams. If she’s taking a blowtorch to cultural tenets that serve to suppress, she’s also taking it the ways she might have limited herself.
This is what she’s done on Self Preservation, which is an extraordinarily good album with a combination of power and whimsy that can only come from an artist who has put in the work to find out who she is and what’s important to her while also being completely prepared to not take herself too seriously.
The songs are country and they’re rock, but they are not ‘country-rock’ as you might understand it. They are created the way Tori envisaged them when writing them, and she writes alone. And they’re exciting. In a world when we have too much noise, too much news, it may seem that the antidote is to be quiet and bland. This album proves that what actually works to shake off malaise and reinvigorate senses is a collection of songs that really feel like they could take the top of your head off and open it to the cosmos. As she says in the interview, ‘If comfort is what everyone is seeking in art, I want to be the opposite of that. I want to be uncomfortable even within myself when creating it, when I’m delivering it … it’s going to be really important for us as human beings to consume discomfort ... to challenge us. ’
She’s a force, and this album is a manifesto, and I’m here for the New Tori Order.
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