Having come-up in Canada’s DIY scene, knitting – comprised of lyricist, vocalist and guitarist Mischa Dempsey, guitarist/engineer Sarah Harris, bassist Piper Curtis and drummer Andy Mulcair – thrive on urgency. They recorded their enrapturing debut, 2024’s Some Kind of Heaven with
Preoccupations’ Scoot Munro, within the space of a week and commenced work soon after touring that LP. Adopting new techniques with their latest Souvenir, predominantly swapping extensive demoing for serving a song in the moment, knitting demonstrate remarkable development in both their production style, fidelity in the recordings and, Mischa Dempsey’s lyricism is even sharper and engaging as they navigate their experience coming out as trans and reflecting on their younger self. It’s a beautifully human work, one filled with familiarity, remorse, optimism and an irresistible spirit to keep going.

Northern Transmissions spoke to knitting’s Mischa Dempsey and Sarah Harris about swiftly getting back into the studio to make their excellent second record, Souvenir, the band’s go-to karaoke songs and more.

Northern Transmissions: Congratulations on Souvenir, it’s such a great listen. It follows not too long after your debut, Some Kind of Heaven. Had you felt particularly invigorated and inspired, having received such a positive response to your debut and touring it, that you were eager to get back into writing and recording again?

Sarah Harris: When we released the last record, we did a fair bit of touring over a couple years, and at one point, me and Mischa looked at each other, because we’re the youngest two in the band, we were like, ‘Shit, if we don’t make a record now, it’s not gonna be out until we’re like 30, or something!’ I remember having that conversation because everything takes so long to make and release. Typically, you have to have it ready at least six or eight months before the release. We’re just like, ‘We have to start this tomorrow, or else our 20s will feel like they’re slipping away.’ That was one of the main reasons to work quickly; we felt that if we’re gonna do this, we should just do it now.

NT: I was reading that you didn’t overly rehearse going into record the songs, and you worked out of your studio, Sarah. That obviously allowed more time and freedom for experimentation because you’re not restricted by time. I’m interested to hear about your approach to the second album. Sonically, there’s a great throughline from Some Kind of Heaven to Souvenir, and you can hear and feel knitting’s confidence flourish on the new LP, even just in terms of the fidelity of the recordings. What were some of the elements or approaches from album one that you wanted to carry over into these sessions that you were looking forward to exploring more, and what was brand new to your process that you wanted to challenge yourselves with while continuing to push forward in your artistry?

Sarah Harris: Basically, from the first record, we essentially demoed the whole thing as a live off-the-floor band. Then, when we went into the studio for our debut, we knew more or less what we wanted to get out of each song. I think we did the whole thing, besides vocals, in four sessions, so it was a very
condensed period of time. We were very prepared going in, and there wasn’t too much experimentation in that context because we had already demoed it, given that it was an off-the-floor thing.

When we were talking about doing the next record, our schedules for the time period we wanted to work on it just weren’t aligning because I work for a music festival that happens in June every year, so it eats up a couple of months, and other folks had other bands that they were doing stuff with. We realized that we just had to force this into being in any way that we could. Mischa hunkered down, wrote a bunch of songs, and then the other people learned the structure of the songs, particularly Andy, the drummer. That was the first step, and then we all met in St. John’s, which is in my hometown, and was where I was for the summer. We recorded drums, a bunch of bass and a bunch of Mischa’s guitar parts, and produced the structures a little bit more along the way. From there, we had our bed tracks, and that’s where the real experimentation and production happened by adding extra guitars, or my guitars, synth, we did some acoustic guitar, and then all of the vocals. On top of the core structure that we set out, we got a really nice drum sound during that time that we were super happy with, so that helped inspire us even more.

Mischa Dempsey: I think from writing the last album, or doing all of the stuff live, or even practising the songs, and having been a band for a longer amount of time, we all figured out what pockets we fit into within the band, sonically. Sarah, you said that you like to know what kind of parts I’m not gonna be writing for myself, and so we can balance out a little bit, and we have an idea of the drum parts that Andy likes to write and what things work well in songs. I feel like we took the experience that we got through making and touring the last record, and that definitely came into the way we built the songs. I think, like you’re saying, having the foundation to start with, and time and studio space and a lot of the songs to still write after part of them were already recorded, that was a really good and totally different way of working for us. We had the idea of what kind of things would go in the songs, but there was so much room to just play around. I like writing and recording at the same time, it’s nice because you can immediately hear the idea back and feel like something is gonna work, or maybe it’s not gonna work. Whereas, when you’re jamming, sometimes you have to record a voice note just to hear what you were playing because you’re so busy trying to figure out what everyone else is doing, and you don’t even know if it works, necessarily.

NT: Completely, sometimes you can give yourself too much time when working on a song and not know exactly which ideas serve the song the best.

Sarah Harris: Yeah, I really appreciate having the immediate feedback of recording something, playing it back and knowing how it sounds in the context of the record because you’re working with the file of the song instead of in the jam space. As Mischa said, you can’t really hear what you’re saying, or you might fall into patterns of playing that are just easier because you don’t have that space of reflection.

NT: From a lyrical perspective, I loved reading along to the words while listening to the album. The songs are very personal, and many are anchored by coming out as trans, yet you write in a way that leaves space for people of all experiences to share the sentiments you put into them. There’s an amazing human quality to the songs. How was it writing the record and then sharing these songs with your bandmates, family and then audiences for the first time?

Mischa Dempsey: It’s kind of funny, we have a joke in the band that sometimes we’ll do interviews and Sarah and Andy will be like, ‘I had no idea that’s what the song was about!’ We did an interview at a music festival recently where someone was like, ‘What is this song about?’ and I said a bunch of stuff and Sarah was like, ‘Well, to me it’s about being an awesome song, it’s about my awesome guitar riff!’ Which I thought was really funny! Outside of that, it feels really, I don’t know, exposing, in a way. A lot of the lyrics are vulnerable, and I’m still trying to figure out how to talk about them.

Sarah Harris: Sometimes, we work on lyrics together in the studio. I was coming up with suggestions and stuff, and you’d be like, ‘No,’ and then I would say, ‘You gotta tell me what this means if I’m gonna help at all!’ I feel like, at first, you held it really close to your chest.

NT: Was there a song from Souvenir that you all had a special moment with, that was fun to record, or brought you closer together as a band?

Mischa Dempsey: Oh yeah, probably “Here Comes.” Jamming “Here Comes” was really fun because

Andy [Mulcair] thrives on having a really expressive and high-energy drumline to do, so he was really vibing with the loud choruses. That was fun to put together while we were rehearsing it. He came up with the idea for the sort of cheesy motifs in the chorses, which was fun. Working on the lyrics for that song was also pretty funny, too.

Sarah Harris: Yeah, it was one of the songs that we had to finish last. That was probably the last one of the last vocals that we did, and there were a bunch of missing lyrics we just came up with together in the studio.

Mischa Dempsey: I pretty much just came in with the choruses for that one. Sarah Harris: From a guitar standpoint, we had a lot of fun with “Sunrise”; there’s like a bunch of guitar parts, and we added an acoustic guitar and a bunch of stuff.

NT: Nice! Musically, I enjoyed the temperament throughout the record and how nicely it flows. The closing track, “Exit Desire”, was a particular highlight for the wonderful blend of guitar with the synth, and then the electric piano that comes through. I’d love to hear about the development of
that song from a production standpoint. It’s such a captivating closing moment and really stands in the album.

Sarah Harris: Thanks! That one started with Mischa’s guitar playing along to the demo, or maybe separately?

Mischa Dempsey: We did it along to the demo because I kept forgetting how many times I had played something, and we needed the lyric with the melody.

Sarah Harris: Yeah, so Mischa had this demo, and then we did their guitar along to the demo, then it was just their guitar. I think that was right before you left St. John’s. It was the last thing we did in those early sessions. We did your guitar and a few key things, and then after you left, I did some bass synth with a Juno. I only did half of it, which was really freaking annoying because it was a really specific synth sound that I have in St. John’s. I ended up cutting up the first half and reattributing it to the second half, kind of jerry-rigged. It was painstakingly pieced together! But yeah, I’m super happy with it though, in terms of the contrasting like outro piece, that it’s a bit more peaceful compared to the ruckus songs.

NT: You mentioned “Here Comes” earlier. In that song, there’s a mention of singing your karaoke
song. What is your go-to karaoke song?

Mischa Dempsey: Well, I’m gonna speak for Andy because he’s not here and he’s the karaoke king. You can’t say the K-word around that man!

Sarah Harris: We haven’t even told him our secret yet, right? Mischa and I were on a walk on our European tour, and I think we were in Margate. We passed a karaoke bar that was actively having karaoke, and earlier that day, Andy had expressed wanting to do karaoke, but we didn’t tell him because we were too tired. It was a Sunday, and we just didn’t want to awaken the karaoke king.

NT: What’s Andy’s go-to song?

Mischa Dempsey: “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne. I was also gonna say that he does a country song, “What Whiskey Does”.

NT: And what about you two? What do you sing?!

Mischa Dempsey: I have recently been doing “Don’t Look Back in Anger”.

Sarah Harris: I like to switch it up a lot, but I always go back to David Bowie songs, maybe “Modern Love”.

NT: Finally, what do you hope people take from listening to Souvenir?

Mischa Dempsey: One thing I always try keep in mind, when I’m thinking about what I want to write about, is that I am trans and I am queer and I have my experiences from that point of view, but I want to write about them as relatable experiences to people who aren’t trans or queer because they are just ultimately very human experiences in a way that I feel the trans experience or the queer experience gets very pigeonholed as something that only specific people experience. So, I hope that people with many experiences can find comfort and also enjoy the songs.

Sarah Harris: I’ll say that I hope people are inspired to make their own records and keep working with friends and keep the production as close to home as possible because you can do it yourself and have a lot of fun. You don’t need fancy studios to make a really good record.

Order Souvenir by Knitting HERE