Alex MacDonald asked Rowen Kahn to join Mermaid Island before she’d heard him play a note. They met one October night at El Coyote in Hollywood, a mutual friend was hosting a dinner, and by the end of it Kahn had agreed to learn bass and become the band’s second member. MacDonald had been looking for the right people for about a year. With Kahn locked in, it took another six months to find a drummer who matched the energy.
The band’s self-titled debut LP arrives June 12, vinyl via Anxious and Angry and digital via No Dad Records, the independent label founded by Canadian music and media personality George Stroumboulopoulos. The bulk of the album was tracked live off the floor in two days with engineer Jacob Johnston and mixed by Jordan Kulp, who’d met the band at their shows and offered to do it. MacDonald and drummer David Westerhout produced.
Westerhout’s arrival was its own story. The original drummer quit two days before a gig. MacDonald called Westerhout, who she’d briefly met during a vocal session a few months earlier, and asked him to fill in. He learned the set in two days, played the show, and afterwards offered to join the band indefinitely. He stayed on long enough to help shepherd the album through the studio.
The songs hit fast and stay there. Melodic vocal lines sit on top of chord progressions that owe more to East Coast folk than to most LA punk records, sped up and pushed through distortion. The hooks lodge on the first listen and the lyrics carry their weight. The live-off-the-floor recording is audible in how tightly the band locks together. Nothing sounds patched in afterwards. MacDonald grew up busking outside the liquor store for change in Cape Breton, and the kitchen-party logic of Maritime folk music shows up in the writing even when the volume goes up.
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MacDonald founded the band in late 2022 after moving to LA in 2018 to write. The pandemic gutted her social life when most of her friends went back to Canada. She stayed, wrote songs and scripts and electronic music alone, and started building toward something she could put her name on. Mermaid Island’s first show was an acoustic set at Hotel Cafรฉ in Hollywood in October 2022. The name came from a friend’s four-year-old who was obsessed with mermaids.
Videos for “Ice Cream” and “Panic Button” are both out, the latter dropped on June 2. The current lineup is MacDonald on guitar and vocals, Jenna Terranova on drums, Jesse Shafer on bass, and Judah Bell on guitar. MacDonald walked us through the album track by track and answered a handful of questions about the band’s origins, the move south, and what she’s been protecting.
“He Started It” reads like it had been queued up for years before it became a song. Was there a specific moment that finally pushed it out, or did it just accumulate until the track existed on its own?
It was a long time coming, but it was exacerbated by a few situations I found myself in where I felt powerless. I needed an outlet for the rage I had brewing inside of me. As women we are conditioned by society to make ourselves agreeable and soft and polite, and when I moved to LA and found myself in rooms with these men who were decision makers and held power over my income and my career, I found myself suppressing my instinctive reactions on a regular basis. I wish I could say I always used my voice and stood up for myself, but the reality is we are often forced to prioritize our safety, either physically or financially.
Withstanding being sexualized all the time and being treated like an object or a commodity is not in my nature. It boiled up inside of me and I needed somewhere to put it. “He Started It” was one small way I could put a voice to that anger and validate those feelings. Being sexually harassed and sexualized without consent feels violent, and I wanted a way to retaliate with a reaction of violence. The song is so empowering for me, and I hope that it is empowering to other girls and women or anyone who feels like they need a safe place to express their rage.
The lineup story is unusual. Asking Rowen to join before hearing him play, David learning the set in two days, the current iteration with Jenna Terranova, Jesse Shafer, and Judah Bell. Does Mermaid Island feel like one band to you, or has each version been its own thing?
First of all, I take no credit for the band because it really started itself. I’m just grateful that it happened to be in my brain and I’m gifted with the responsibility of making sure the band stays true to its identity. The core ethos of the band, the values, the sense of community, and the greater purpose is what makes the band consistent.
It took a while to get started. I had been looking for the right people to play with for about a year before I met Rowen, who was the first person to join the band. He was as excited about it as I was, and after that, it took us another almost six months to find a drummer who felt the same way. We’ve gone through a few line up changes, but whoever is on stage is there because they want to be and they’re having an absolute fucking blast. And every person who has stepped on stage with us has contributed to the band being able to exist and I’m so grateful for that.
I’m the only consistent member, but the band will always be ‘us’ rather than ‘my band’ because it is so much bigger than me or any of us. I always say that if we had to get a new singer the band would still be the band. The songs, the energy of the live shows, the pureness of heart, and the joy we feel, that’s what the band is.
You stayed in LA in 2020 when most of your people went back to Canada. What were you protecting by not going home?
I couldn’t leave because I’m stubborn as fuck. I don’t give up on things I start. I was in Toronto for 10 years, and I loved Toronto. But I said I was going to live in LA for 10 years. I sure as shit was not about to go back early. Once I say I’m going to do something, that’s it.
But I ended up alone. My boyfriend at the time and most of my friends went back. I don’t have any family here, so I was completely isolated. I found it impossible to make friends.
I almost lost my mind. I spent all of my time writing songs, making electronic music, writing scripts, and bothering my neighbours. I had all of this pent-up energy inside of me and I was just desperate to express it. I wanted to go to shows again, get in the pit, play music, and find my community. But it never even crossed my mind to give up and go back to Canada. I knew exactly what was back there. I had already lived there. I wanted more, and I’m someone who thrives in chaos and uncertainty.
“Panic Button” is the cryogenic-freezing-while-the-person-you-love-ages song. Where did that image come from, and why was that the right one for the single?
Panic Button was never supposed to be a single, and honestly I wasn’t even sure if it was going to make the record. It was our only slow (ish) song. I actually have a whole movie that I wrote that came first.
It’s a moody futuristic sci-fi about a woman who freezes herself as part of a paid experiment and wakes up five years later to find some of her loved ones have died, her family is resentful for her abandoning them, and she has to navigate reintegrating herself into a new reality. I was writing that script, and I wrote the song alongside it. The song came from feeling stuck, feeling incapable of communicating, and wanting so badly for someone to see you but feeling trapped inside a shell of yourself.
The song has become a lot of people’s favourite song. I’m actually surprised how much people have responded to it. It definitely has more of an emotional undertone than some of our other more fun, aggressive songs.
The bio mentions east-coast Canadian influences. What does that actually mean to you in practice, and what doesn’t translate when you play those songs in LA?
I grew up on Celtic folk music in a tiny town in Nova Scotia, so the culture of the Maritimes is in my blood and a part of everything I do. I got my start playing music by busking outside the liquor store for change in Cape Breton. Every Sunday there was a free outdoor concert and practically the whole town would come. Music where I’m from is built around community. Everyone knows each other and everyone plays together. It’s the kitchen party, the impromptu concerts, backyard venues, passing around the guitar, everyone joining in to sing along, and live music at every gathering. I think that’s why I have always been drawn to punk culture. There are a lot of cultural overlaps with folk and punk. There are no rockstars in punk, you’re on the same level as the audience and everyone is a part of it. I want to bring that ethos to everything that I do with music.
Lots of people in LA either don’t understand it or want to commodify it in a way that makes sense to them. But you can’t sell the feeling you get at one of our shows. You can’t put a price on a sense of belonging. That feeling is pure and I will viciously protect it from the predatory pricks who think every punk girl on stage should be in booty shorts. They can fuck off.
MacDonald also walked through the album song by song:
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“Freaks”
This was one of the first songs I wrote for the record and it’s always the one we play first in our live set. I wanted it to feel fast, loud and as fun as possible. It was a way for me to feel at home with not feeling like I fit in anywhere. But I was going full speed ahead by myself on a path that I knew would only be my own. I wrote this song so I could find my people, here in LA and all over the world. And it worked. It started coming together. My friends started to find me. People started coming to the shows. A community started forming around the music.
This record was meant to be played live. I wanted songs that people could scream along to, jumping up and down, expressing these pent up feelings of rage, desperation and frustration. I was dying to get back on stage, and wanted to inspire people to crawl out of their dark bedrooms, get some sunlight on their skin, feel energized and alive and a little less alone. There is so much power in knowing your neighbours and your community, and I see what in-person connection and resource sharing can do, especially with what we’re up against right now.
“Perfectly Happy”
It’s fun. It’s a banger. It’s a bop. It’s fun to play live. Art is a place to explore and express. This song is a self-aware darkly comedic attempt to poke fun at the pointlessness of spiraling in negative thoughts. I often get pissed at my friends for saying the kinds of shit I say in this song. It’s really about how aimless and absurd it is to give a voice to the thought patterns that keep you trapped in unhappiness. The more you focus on bitching about everything you hate, the more attention you give to it and the more power you give it in your mind. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to bring awareness to important issues. Call people out on their shit. Say it to their face, don’t bring it to me. I’m talking about complaining about interpersonal drama. Venting and making space for recurring issues that never get resolved. You come to me once with a problem, a frustration, I’ll hear you out and validate you and support you however you need. You come to me again, a second time, I’ll tell you what you need to do that you’re not seeing. You try to come to me a third time trying to vent about the same issue, my door is not open. You’re on your own. I’ve wasted enough of my life and time on this planet talking through issues and going around and around in circles. I’ve found that what works is action. Trying something new that you haven’t tried. Changing your environment, or changing your own behaviour. And focusing on what you’re doing instead of someone else.
“He Started It”
I used to have a job at this place where there were a lot of wealthy and powerful men. It was not what I thought it was going to be, and I found that out pretty quickly. I never really felt like they saw me as fully human. At first it was okay, and the other girls helped me deal with it. There was kind of a sisterhood in it. The men would constantly push my boundaries, testing me to see what they could get away with. I am ashamed to say that I didn’t speak out sooner. I was warned about who was dangerous. Then I found myself warning other girls about those predators but not really doing anything about it. I felt powerless. I was still putting up with being treated that way to make money. But it started wearing me down, and the anger and rage inside of me was getting harder and harder to hide. This song was one of the safe places I could express those feelings.
“Panic Button”
I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of being cryogenically frozen. I am a huge sci-fi fan. I had this idea for a story about a woman who is frozen as part of an experiment and wakes up five years in the future. She struggles to navigate her new life, feeling like so much has changed and she doesn’t fit in anymore. I wrote this song while I was working on that script. The song is about being frozen but conscious, and watching everyone you know and love get old and die without being able to communicate. It’s really about feeling stuck, not being about to say what you want to say. I’ve lost a lot of friends, close friends that I still think about every day. I would do anything to be able to talk to them again. I do, but I know they can’t hear me. Even if you haven’t experienced significant loss, there is something so intrinsically human about being desperate to communicate but never feeling completely understood, seen, or heard. This song almost didn’t make the record. I wanted all the songs to be high energy, and I thought this one was too slow. But it turned out to be a lot of people’s favorite song.
“Horse Shit”
I used to live in this gnarly rodent-infested house in Toronto that had a bunch of bedrooms and a lot of people would come and go. I used to drink a lot, and one night I somehow made it home, got into a fight with my cranky old neighbour who lived on the first floor, and passed out in the stairwell leading up to our part of the house. I was asleep inside this tiny, dark, super steep stairwell, and I just remember waking up to her screaming at me for being such a shit, in her nightdress, backlit by the blinding sunlight and backed up by some useless cops. She called the cops on me probably five or six times in the 2 years that I lived there and that was the last time. It was right before I got sober. I don’t blame her at all for hating me, it was probably hell living under us. She used to throw a bucket of water on us when we would smoke on the front stoop.
In a separate note on the song, MacDonald framed it more directly:
Horse shit is about doing the same thing over and over and over again, and feeling trapped in patterns of addiction and unhealthy habits. It’s about wanting to change, but finding yourself waking up every day the same person you were yesterday. I wrote this song about how hard it can be to get sober, get clean, and get your head right, and how sometimes these things take a thousand tries before something sticks. It’s always worth it to keep going.
“Shit Out of Luck”
Shit out of luck is the closest thing we have to a love song. It’s about being completely sidelined by someone in the most annoying and inconvenient way possible. The refusal to accept that some connections are inevitable and sometimes you just have to let life get in the way of your plans.
“Ice Cream”
This song was inspired by a situation where I was trying to explain how business transactions work to a five year old. She was selling me ice cream from her toy ice cream set, and I gave her fake money and told her I wanted chocolate but she gave me vanilla. I tried to explain that I wanted to be able to decide what flavour I had and if I’m paying for it I would get to choose. But she said ‘you get what you get, and don’t get upset.’ I think it’s supposed to be about acceptance. I thought it was hilarious that she was using it on me, probably because she was tired of me trying to rationalize everything and logically explain complex concepts to her and teach her so much about the world, because she’s five and she just wanted to play with her toys. The phrase itself stuck with me and I used it to get through some annoying situations of my own and focus on accepting instead of trying to change things or control other people. I owe a lot to that kid, she was super cool and also one time explained her entire birth to me in great detail.
Catch the band at the following dates:
6/14: 4th Horseman, Long Beach, CA
6/27: Redwood, Los Angeles, CA (Gerald Shaia Memorial Show)
7/2: Deep End, Redondo Beach, CA
7/17: The Slipper Clutch, Los Angeles, CA (Record Release Show)
7/24: Red Dwarf, Las Vegas, NV
7/25: Hola Habibi, Las Vegas, NV
8/12: Casbah, San Diego, CA*
8/13: The Sardine, San Pedro, CA (Recess Romp)*
8/16: Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco, CA*^
* with Off With Their Heads
*^ with Off With Their Heads and Dillinger Four
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