When Kailan McGee reached out to me to share her new album Lady of the Moon, and from the moment I stepped into this record, I knew I wanted to talk with her about it.
Lady of the Moon immediately pulled me into something cinematic and deeply atmospheric. The record carries this haunting, mystical energy that feels both intimate and expansive at the same time, like wandering through an ancient forest lit only by moonlight. There is something beautifully immersive about the way Kailan approaches songwriting, not simply as music, but as world-building.
From the moon phase structure of the tracklist to the visual storytelling and the conceptual themes inspired by folklore, mythology, and imagination, Lady of the Moon feels crafted with genuine care and artistic vision. It is the kind of album that invites you to slow down and experience it as a complete journey.
You can explore Kailan’s music here:
🎧 Spotify | 🍎 Apple Music | 🎶 Bandcamp | ▶️ YouTube
You told me that you released this album on April’s full moon (Pink Moon). Can you tell me more about why you chose this moment?
The full Pink Moon is my favourite full moon. It signifies change and rebirth, and that also kind of felt like a life parallel in this writing shift and approach that I took with this album in comparison to my first originals album.
My last expansive and multi-formatted debut album had 21 original songs, all drawing on personal experience. This is the therapy approach to songwriting that I deeply needed to do with this first record. With Lady of the Moon, I wanted to challenge myself in songwriting by doing something that I was unfamiliar with, and so I decided, with old spooky German folk tales being in my reading repertoire at the time, to make a completely imaginative concept record around just that.
I decided to choose the destination, the Black Forest, and chose to look at photographs of this forest to set the tone for my imagination. From there, I started developing mind maps and detailing the notes I wanted to touch on for each track of the record. These mind maps then turned into 70 pages (front and back!) of character development and poetry, which then turned into the songs on the record.
Each time I referred back to the photographs as an anchor for world-building, I noticed the moon. Planning a release around a celestial event seemed like a magical move for a mystical record.
Can you tell me more about the choice of the album title?
Yes! So, like I said in the last question, the moon is the main theme of this album. Each track on this album is not labeled numerically and instead holds a corresponding moon phase. So Lady of the Moon felt like a natural fit.
But, fun fact: Lady of the Moon was a song that I wrote before my first album was even out! On my first album there is a spooky single called Long Live the Night, which was a standout track for me. It somehow did not even feel like it fit on such a multi-formatted album, and so I wanted to create something more like it once again.
Lady of the Moon sat there for a while as nothing more than a studio demo. Then, when this album idea came into play, I remembered that Lady of the Moon was still sitting there, and that it really intensely fit the vibe of what I was going for. So, with a little bit of restructuring and reworking, it became a cohesive part of the storyline and, in turn, became the title track.
Were there any unexpected turns during the production process?
Definitely. Music is beautiful in that way though, nothing ever happens the same way twice.
Speaking to a reroute though, I would have to talk about the track Clairvoyance, the last track on the record, which is labeled not numerically but by the waxing crescent moon phase (🌘).
This song came to life in so many layers. The main lick was me playing around with sounds in and around an Em scale on the guitar, and then using my ear to find cool sounding notes that fit into the sound around the scale. So, the main guitar part had been written as a mere finger-picking exercise that I kept going back to over the years because, for some reason, it felt bigger.
One day, when I was trying to write the last song for the record to fit in with the 8 songs for 8 moon phases, I decided to try and put words to it. I already knew that I wanted to write a song called Clairvoyance because I had mind maps with decided titles for each track already, so I just took a look at the mind map for Clairvoyance and took words directly from the page and came up with the melody effortlessly. It came together so quickly.
Upon completion, I was still not sold on the quality of the song. So, when I handed the song to my guitar player, Darrell Wallace, and implored him to do his thing, what he came up with blew me away. I will never forget the magic I felt when he gave me the song back with his additions. It suddenly felt serendipitous and simultaneously sophisticated.
The spectral sounding guitar he added, along with the brilliant addition of triangle by my drummer, Graham Shaw, brought this song a magical life. What started as one of my least favourites on the record ended up becoming a favourite.
As a singer, did you write your own lyrics, and if so, what inspired them?
I do write my own lyrics! I do not think there is a universe where I would not write my own lyrics. Even artists who have wanted to collaborate with me, I have turned down when it is a complete song already written. I only want to be involved in projects where I am involved in the writing process. Lyrics mean the world to me, and writing is such a huge part of my heart.
The lyrics for this album were inspired by the imaginative exercise that I gave to myself in writing this album. I needed to pull entirely from my mind. I needed to prove to myself that I could create a universe from the ground up. So these lyrics were inspired by me and this idea to write this concept record.
I will say that there is a lot of inspiration pulled from the ’70s lineup of Fleetwood Mac and even Stevie Nicks’s first solo record, Bella Donna, on Lady of the Moon. Lady of the Moon is basically a love letter to the spooky era of Fleetwood Mac.
I also admire author Alice Hoffman’s work. So this record is quite literally a mash-up of all things spooky pulled from my world into this world that I have created.
Do you also play instruments, or were the instrumental parts done by someone else? (And if so, who?)
I play guitar just well enough to write. So I write chords to the poetry or melodies (in whichever order these come to me), and then I hand what I have written to my producer and husband, Kevin Comeau. He takes these songs and breathes more life than I could have ever imagined into my work.
Then, when we have the demos, I hand them to the wizards that I am lucky enough to call my band, and they breathe even more life into these songs.
Working with these incredible musicians has given me so much confidence in my writing abilities. To write as a foundation on my own is absolutely the way forward for me, but the expansiveness of adding this brilliant instrumentation is why I can now understand why more heads are better than one on any given project.
My brother, Jacob McGee-Gauthier, did drums on Hellfire Tonight (represented by the waxing gibbous moon phase or 🌔), so that was an unbelievably special experience for me to get him into the studio.
What part of the album are you most proud of, even if listeners might not immediately notice it?
I am going to give a cliché answer here and say the whole album I am the most proud of! To write and create an expansive world from the ground up, and also to create tracks in a cohesive nature that stand well on their own, but also fit together like puzzle pieces, is no easy feat!
It was so much fun though!
If someone discovers your music for the first time through this new release, what do you hope it tells them about your artistic world?
Something that I have come to learn is that the way we intend to deliver our music is never the way it is absorbed. We can plot and plan and try desperately to let people into our universe in the way we intend, yet we cannot make them see anything from our direct lens.
The way the internet has evolved means that the average attention span is much shorter for music than it ever has been. So I would hope that people listen to the album from the new moon phase (🌑) onward and absorb it that way.
However, I am just thankful to have my music absorbed in any way. If you like concept records and have the attention span for them, feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts on this record!
Are there any future projects you want to give us a sneak peek about?
Sure! Actually, I have decided that I really like writing concept records, and so my next record is already written in full.
This record will be about misunderstood characters throughout Greek mythology. I also do visual art in the form of paintings to represent each track that I work on, so if you hop on my socials and take a look at my paintings, you will be able to tell what I am writing about and how far in advance I am writing about these subjects.
There is something refreshing about hearing an artist speak so passionately about world-building and storytelling in music, especially at a time where everything often feels rushed and fragmented online. Kailan’s approach reminds me that albums can still feel immersive, mysterious, and cinematic when artists fully commit to their vision.
And honestly, hearing that the next concept record is inspired by misunderstood figures from Greek mythology already has me incredibly curious.
Thank you, Kailan, for taking part in this interview and sharing your creative journey with such openness.
Kailan’s website here.
— Spacey Panda
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