Joanne Robertson is an enigmatic figure … until you get on the phone with her. The Glasgow-based artist’s interviews are infrequent, and her catalog is brimming with an intimacy that can make listeners feel as if they’re eavesdropping. The musician, painter, and poet is the rare artist of interest to both high-powered gallerists and r/deanblunt subscribers; her hushed public image made her ardency throughout our long call somewhat startling. Quick-witted and full of curiosity, she turned questions back onto me during a few moments that didn’t make the final edit, eager to spark discourse instead of nazel-gazing.

Here’s what we left in: motherhood, messiness, TikTok, tradwives, country music, experimental music, and many musings on “the work” and why it matters. She’s the type of creative person who couldn’t possibly do anything else. It’s obvious in her joyful process and unselfish penchant for collaboration. Her new record, Blurrr, is timeless and self-assured, a portrait of a woman who’s always inquisitive. Read our conversation and listen to the album below.

I had a really emotional response to this new record. Since improvisation is a big part of your process, do you feel like a vessel, or do you have to access certain feelings in order to write?

Joanne Robertson: I think it’s a balance between the two. I have my brain, and then I have this other thing where it’s like throwing up stuff. Not throwing up, maybe that’s the wrong word. That’s kind of the only thing I can liken it to, in a way. It’s something you just can tap into. But I can’t tap into it all the time, or I choose not to, and maybe that’s where the interesting parts lie for me with this idea of the vessel.

In terms of process, I would say I do both, but I have these things that I go back to. When I am in the moment, improvising, it’s a kind of an imaginary space I go to which is connected to memory. Also, it’s about thinking about composition, and other people’s songs. I definitely think we’re all listening and looking out. I make music how I paint in a way, which is in the moment, improvising. But I’m always questioning what improvisation is, too. There’s all different takes on it. Having spent time with heavy improv-type people in London, like the Derek Bailey set, hanging out with his widow Karen Brookman Bailey, in London when I was younger, we would talk about improvisation. It’s a huge subject, similar to expressionism, in a sense. There’s lots of different arguments about what it is and what it isn’t. I think it’s a lifelong exploration for me. I’m really interested in engaging the intellectual and the emotional at the same time. With writing music and painting paintings, I would say it’s very much about an engagement between the two. Ultimately, you want to get to the space where you let go of the intellectual. It’s a really crazy experience, and a memorable one. I think you can become addicted to that high. You go back to it. It’s almost like a drug.

Would you say you’re still studying improvisation?

Yes, definitely. I’d say I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life. It seems people suggest I learn through experimentation, which I guess is a curse and a blessing. I’m also interested in defocusing and being very loose and almost hilarious in the moment. The comical comes up in my work somehow, because I do just start giggling or crying. I’m interested in that, in terms of being a woman as well, and the history of that as a vehicle for making people a little uncomfortable, perhaps. But also to communicate in a way that feels a bit honest with people, and make them feel emotional too. I like all the different emotions.

Across your entire catalog, it’s sometimes difficult to decipher what you’re singing, your sort of Elizabeth Fraser-isms. Why make these stylistic choices, especially when you’re a poet?

I started writing music really young, at about 12. I just automatically did that before I’d even heard of the Cocteau Twins. I was already making music that was totally just sounds. I was more interested in tone and the sound rather than getting weighed down with the lyrics. I also don’t like lyrics that are didactic. I don’t like to be told how I’m feeling, so it links back to abstraction somehow, perhaps, stylistically and poetry. I listen to a lot of music that doesn’t have any lyrics, and I guess I was interested in the voice becoming more of a loose instrument, an instrument in itself. I was studying a lot of literature as a kid, and I don’t always think words need to be this strict, because they do bend. I don’t know if it’s also because I’m from the north of England, but there’s a lot of confusion sometimes. Maybe I was just listening to a lot of sounds that weren’t verbal. I don’t know if it’s supposed to sound like other things, like in nature, somehow. I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m mumbling.

I wouldn’t say mumbling, but it’s definitely very reverb soaked, and sort of fragmented. It feels like collage to me, sometimes.

I’m totally into that. I studied that a lot as well, in painting and poetry and things. The themes in my work sometimes feel like ... if I go more abstract with the way the words come out, I can travel in my brain to these weird visual spaces, and then I’m located there, and I start drawing a new picture, because often I’m improvising the lyrics when I’m writing the songs. So they’re gonna sound made up, maybe, to get me to the new space. And then I have visions, and then I jump off that as a visual in the lyrics. I don’t do that in all my songs. And I’ve noticed the ones which are less improvisatory are more traditional, and they go to more of a country thing.

Like a Townes Van Zandt? Who are the references there?

Lots of people. I listened a lot to Tammy Wynette when I was like 20. And Guy Clark. I love all that stuff. But also a lot of folk. I like things to be kind of simple in music, the simple themes, rather than overly expressing myself with lyrics. I do it in painting as well. I take away a lot of subject matter. I’ve always been obsessed with destroying the idea of subject matter somehow, but still having the feeling of a subject. I don’t know what that’s about, but that’s something I’ve been obsessed with since I was 16.

Do you view it as a challenge to move listeners without them having to immediately buy into the words?

I often don’t think about the audience. That’s terrible, isn’t it?

That was my next question for you. How heavily you consider the perception.

I don’t think a lot about audience in the moment when I’m writing, but I’ll listen back and I’ll say, Oh, that feels emotional. Yeah, I can put that out in the world. It’s taken me a long time to release a lot of the stuff I’ve written. It’s really old, a lot of my music, that then is reworked, or something’s put on top, or a bit of lead. It’s never really meant to be heard, my solo stuff, but sometimes it just finds its way out there through different channels. I often record on my own at home, and people send me stuff, and I send it back, I don’t use my computer much but I do use it for that. There’s hours of recording sessions to go through, and perhaps there’s one little bit, and that might be the song. Or it’s the first take. So you’re not really thinking so much about it in the world. The world is always there, I guess. I’m definitely not trying deliberately to challenge the audience.

Is there a particular song on this record that took a lot of takes? Where you had that feeling, when you’re still in the studio and you just can’t seem to leave?

They’re almost more periods in my life where things have happened, and then I’ve had a reaction to it. That’s often how I write music. Not so much painting—painting’s more like a continual inquiry. Songs are often reactions to relationships, or whatever. I’ve been listening back to them all. They’re all pretty immediate. They all just sort of came out. But maybe there was a little, you know, figuring out a riff, or discarding a riff, or playing around with melodies and then discarding it and then keeping something. I never listen back much whilst writing. I just keep going. When I’m recording, I don’t rewind, I just press record, and then it’s hours of short-term memory. Remembering what happened, and then playing around with it a bit more. They’re all pretty much the same. I think a couple of tracks were recorded when my son was born, and I had to be really quiet. I was forced to sing quite quietly. On maybe “Peaceful,” was it? I quite like the songs that maybe people aren’t gonna like the most, like “Last Hay.” It’s me, just singing in the daytime, and it’s a different kind of emotion. I can’t actually remember any of them being hard work. The songs that often make it onto records are moments where I felt it was working.

I have a friend who’s an incredible songwriter, and I always joke that he’s God’s mouthpiece, because things just sort of tumble out of him. He’s great at not being too precious. But I don’t want to remove his agency. When I say that, I sometimes feel bad, like it maybe strips him of something.

It makes sense. I think songwriting is very traditional. You do sit down, and you write poetry. My songwriting is quite traditional. I definitely don’t think I’m that experimental, which has always been my thing, being very fixed in the experimental music world. I do tend to just sit down like a songwriter and goof around, and write music. I’m not pressing loads of pedals. The question to me always is what is experimental, I guess.

You’ve made paintings inspired by music. How often does the inverse happen, where a painting informs a song?

I don’t really paint from music. Where did you read that?

Well, you made drawings inspired by the shapes of guitars.

When I paint, I listen to music, but I don’t think about anything obviously musical when I paint, usually. I just paint, and then I just keep going into the unknown with it, I would say it’s more lyrical. I’m learning from painting that it’s really important to let go of the control and just let it be a thing in itself. Accepting that that’s me, rather than going, Oh, I’m gonna put that away, I’m not gonna look at that for ages. It teaches me to reapproach the work with a sense of self, which maybe I used to not do because I’d see it as more of a time-based thing which you could hide on your computer. With my paintings, it’s really in your face. It’s there, and you can’t ignore it. It teaches me to go back, and work into the song in a way that’s sort of sculptural, with lead guitars, or harmonies. But I’m able to trust in the moment a bit. I always have done that with my music in a way, but maybe now it feels like they’re quite linked up in terms of the simplicity of the way I work within both fields.

Do they use the same part of your brain?

Definitely. They do now. I don’t know if they always did, because I was learning for years. I was just experimenting, and now I’m releasing stuff that I wrote in those moments of experimentation. But I feel like, through doing that for a long time, they’ve just naturally synced up.

I’m curious about how you feel about people owning your paintings, because that feels so different to me than someone owning a CD or vinyl.

I’m really interested in that, and I have been for a long time. That’s partly why I’ve always tried to have a foot in both worlds. I just wrote a piece about this painter and this conversation she has with Mike Kelley, where she talks about wanting to make art that behaves like music, and why that gets on people’s nerves. I was in the art world quite young, sort of thrown into it and doing these museum shows and hanging out with critics. It was quite terrifying, the way people spoke, the way people revered art. I remember going to this music festival with Elisa Ambrogio from The Magik Markers, and hanging out with Sonic Youth. I remember making a drawing for my friend Byron Coley who I met there, and it was this really scratty drawing of this girl. It was quite funny, and I remember thinking this is cool and they know a lot about art. I met James Ferraro there, and we became good friends, and I had all these weird meetings, and watched shows there that changed my life, because I realized that music could be just as experimental as the art world, and maybe the parties were slightly more fun. I felt like it was a bit more free. I could just move my body and I didn’t have to think about what I was saying or what I was thinking. I don’t know if it’s because of the way I was raised, but I didn’t really grow up with art around me. I didn’t grow up in a big, major city. I found sometimes that music or the club or the venue space felt a bit more interesting at that point, but I still was very much interested in the art world, and wanted to go back into it, and started to research the crossovers. I wanted to understand how the two could be connected. Is that what we were talking about?

I like where it’s going.

For the question, my work stayed quite separate. That’s something I became very aware of. I didn’t want to start playing noise music in galleries. I was this weird solo singer singing songs about emotions, I wanted to be like Johnny Cash. I almost feel like I’ve never really fit in either world. I have in a very specific way, but not in an obvious way, which I think I quite enjoy.

How have you navigated, in both worlds, dealing with the professional critics that you talked about?

Oh yeah, because you were talking about money when owning a painting or a CD? I didn’t answer that question. With painting and music, I try not to think about the money. I go away from the money and just try to find a way to make it work.

I think I’m less curious about the money, and more curious about the ownership that someone would have over a physical piece of your work.

My work is kind of strange. I could have perhaps made more commercial turns in my art career, but I decided to just stay true to what felt right. I guess you could still say it’s commercial, but this ownership thing ... I think when I was very young, it used to upset me, the thought of not being able to see them ever again like loved ones you can’t see. I’d be very upset for about ten seconds, I’d be almost the most devastated I’ve ever felt. But then I quickly was like, nope, I’m fine. I can deal with this. I learned to deal with that as a way to keep going, but also not to worry if things leave the studio or stay in the studio. It’s a continual body of work, that you remember everything you’ve ever made. With painting, I feel like you can remember it really well. With music, I do forget about what I’ve written. If you asked me to play some songs, I wouldn’t know how to play them, not that I’d ever know how to paint the same work, but I can remember the image.

How did you land on the Blurrr cover? It’s the same type of casual image as the Painting Stupid Girls artwork, but it almost feels less intimate to me.

A lot of my images are very intimate moments with people, or at concerts, when I was playing somewhere, away from loved ones. They’re kind of deliberately unexplainable. I’ve always liked that image because it looks like I have little horns.

Is this a selfie? Did you take this yourself?

Yeah, a while ago. I think I was on tour with someone, and the lighting was crazy, and I was just experimenting with the lights. I was making lots of films, as well. None of them were particularly interesting. But I don’t really think I’m a photographer. I’m not very good at photography. I find album sleeves kind of hard, so I always go for this weird in-between space. It’s almost like a drawing. It’s supposed to be a bit off, a bit wrong. But I like it. I like the shapes. Certain pictures of me remind me of my granny, who I was quite close with, who I loved.

That’s beautiful.

Her history was quite interesting. She had this look. And I sometimes look for my family or my mum. I often look a little bit like different people when it’s more blurry. But the title is different. The title comes from a painterly reference.

The only named collaborator on Blurrr is your friend Oliver Coates. Did you set out to work together for the purpose of this album, or did it happen more organically?

Oliver and I are very good friends. We live in the same city. He lives around the corner with his family, and our kids are friends. I’m very good friends with his wife, Amy Coates, who’s a really great singer, and my husband’s very close with them. We have this desire to work together, but we didn’t go into the studio together with this work, I sent him some old home recorded files and he worked alone on them, in his own way, and sent them back and I loved them.

Does your son have any musical inclinations yet?

Yeah, definitely. We took him on tour since he was young. He’s a natural performer. He likes the stage. He’s quite comedic, and he seems to have a good ear. It’ll be interesting to see. I don’t really like to push things on him. My parents didn’t do that with us. I’m really into just being playful, but I might see if he likes the piano and he already loves playing guitar and making up songs. I said to him the other day, make something sad. And then he did this really sad song. He seems to be able to understand emotions in relation to sound, which is quite cool.

There is something really beautiful about what you feel as a child, when you’re still being really shaped by the world and have less of an understanding of what’s going on. I do think there’s a chance things are purer.

Yeah, totally. It’s amazing to watch him paint. I’m just totally obsessed with him. He’s so cool. He’s a really good painter. I’m really into it. It’s like, super weird composition. The ideas are good. So it’s exciting, and it’ll be interesting to see what he’s into.

I don’t mean to attribute your success to collaboration, because you’re very singular, but there’s a new crop of posturing Dean Blunt listeners on the internet. Do you feel like your fans are intertwined with his, and have you noticed a shift in the way they interact with you?

A shift in relation to what?

It’s difficult for me to explain. His fan base, while I don’t think it’s inherently performative, is gaining weird attention on a platform like TikTok that maybe didn’t exist five, ten years ago.

I don’t know. I’ve never used TikTok, so I don’t know how to go on there. I’m not really into social media that much. I mean, I have Instagram but I was even thinking that’s too much for my little brain, so I don’t look too much. I think it’s cool. He’s so cool, and so interesting. I love him so much. He’s such a great artist that I think the more people that can hear him, the better. He’s a real creative. He’s not what they created, he’s a creator. That’s what’s so powerful.

I think the way I’d relate it to you is that someone listed one of your shirts on eBay for $750. And Nettspend was pictured wearing the same shirt. He’s a teenage rapper with a sizable following. Does it feel like your audience is getting younger?

I love the younger people coming to the shows. They’ve always come to my shows, weirdly, because it’s quite emotional. It’s quite teenage, what I do, so I think it’s natural that teenage energy gets shifted onto the work, even though I’m way older. I’ve always been quite interested in that teenage feeling. There’s an anarchic energy, if that makes sense. It’s such an important time, that time when you’re in your early 20s.

I’m 21, so I’m living it right now.

I was studying so hardcore then, so I was really into music at that point. I was listening to super experimental music when I was that age. So it gives me faith that young people are gonna fight this idea of being told what to think, perhaps. Some of the young people I’ve met have been some of the brightest and also most passionate, rather than cynical. I don’t ever really know anything about the mainstream, or mainstream culture. I listen to some stuff, and I know some famous people, but I’ve always listened to more underground music. That’s probably a bit boring of me to say.

I don’t find that boring.

I get really upset when mainstream music’s on the radio. My husband puts it on purposefully, and I just almost turn into the grumpiest old man you’ve ever met. I sort of grouch around the house.

Is your husband interested in popular music, or is he doing it to bother you?

He’s interested in collage in terms of sound. He’s called Kool Music. He’s extremely open to the world, and he tries to see it for what it is. But he’s very into jazz and less commercial music. He is very autodidactic and loves stranger music. He’ll sit and play the shakuhachi flute for an hour a day. He’s just interested in the whole world, whereas I’m interested in very specific things within music. I think he just likes listening to it, and it doesn’t affect him, it doesn’t annoy him. He doesn’t listen to it, really. At breakfast time, that’s when he’ll put it on sometimes. I’ll just be like, no. I’m a slow riser.

You’ve mentioned an inclination towards messiness, or imperfection. Has that carried through to motherhood?

That’s a really good question. That’s so funny. I’m quite tidy. I’m quite into cleaning. Cleaning is good, actually, for people like me. I like to keep things a bit organized, but I’m not over-the-top. I try not to be too controlling, but that’s just how I was raised. Yesterday, I put all of my son’s toys in categories so he could play with them. I’m obsessed with textiles, so our house is full of textiles and pieces of furniture, yeah. It’s messy in that sense. It’s definitely a bit psychedelic when you come into our house. It’s not minimalist.

Are you inspired by the unpredictable nature that children have?

I like how they don’t overly plan everything, and they’re just playing. Yeah, I guess I’m inspired. I’m inspired by the love you feel. Love is strong. It’s a strong bond that develops, which is very tactile and physical as well. You really feel their energy grow. I never planned to get married or have a big family. I’m really interested in the trad wife thing on Instagram at the moment, and questioning all of that stuff. I don’t know if you follow it.

I’ve seen a lot of it.

Have you? Are you interested in it?

I am. I’m interested in the people who portray this lifestyle on social media as a job. Are you familiar with Ballerina Farm? She’s one of the popular ones, and she comes from a lot of money. Her husband has airline money. I don’t want to say she’s simplistic, because she’s raising all these children. It’s such a job, for any mother. But it takes so much money the way that she’s doing it. And it’s more difficult to understand that as a viewer, because it’s deceptive. Her simple life.

I think some people are scared to look out of control as mothers on social media. I think there’s an element of paranoia about it, because it’s fine if it’s portrayed in a movie. You know what I mean? The reality is, it’s complete chaos and it’s intense and it’s hard work. I think the trad wife is interesting. People will be writing PhDs on this stuff, I’m researching motherhood and social media a little right now.

A lot of the songs on this record feel like lullabies to me.

That’s cool. They probably are, because I was singing a lot of lullabies to him to help him to go to sleep. Also on Black Metal 2, it felt like there were some gentler sounds coming out. I was pregnant when I was singing all that stuff.

If you were a typical artist, I’d ask how you hope Blurrr will be received, but we talked somewhat about people’s perceptions of you and the type of musician you are. So is there anything you’d like to confront or dispute?

I don’t know. I’m just getting on with trying to learn the songs, because I wrote some of the songs years ago. I’m more interested in the guitars I’m gonna play. I’ve been exchanging guitars, and experimenting with different types of guitars. When I start to refocus on music a bit, I start to think about collaborations again.

I am quite curious about what guitars you’re planning on playing at these upcoming shows.

One of the mistakes I’ve made is playing guitars that are too heavy because it restricts your voice. I tend to buy really nice guitars and then sell them, or switch them, and I lose money in the process. The American Telecaster I had was too heavy for me, so I’ve been trying a Fender Telecaster acoustasonic—you can make it sound acoustic and electric. I’m not sure yet if I’m going to bring that to New York or not. We also dug out this thing that had become a kind of artwork, this old Epiphone guitar from the 70s which my husband bought when we were married. I’m probably gonna play that because it has a really interesting sound.

I don’t even know how you and Dean met and started working together. I’ve always really loved the creative partnership that you have, and I’m so curious about what that scene’s been like to you. I think you’re part of a real scene, even now that you’re in Glasgow.

I always talk about moving back to London. We could move back now, in theory, but I have a really nice home here, and a studio that I love. It’s really hard to leave Glasgow if you are settled here because it is so easy and I can walk everywhere.

I’m from the south, but I live in Los Angeles now. I mean, you’re still in a city, but I’ve had that pull between being super settled and having a more active life.

I think a lot of people come through Glasgow because it’s a musical city, in a way, and it has art people here. It is a good city to live in, but I’m always like, Oh, what would it be like to live in the countryside. But I walked out last night and had this fresh sea air from the west coast of Scotland blowing in my face, and the blue sky, by this weird church and I was like, Oh, man, it’s pretty nice. I like fresh air. I know that sounds really old, but I do love that fresh beautiful ocean air, and nature. I love nature.

With the scene, I was never really into going out that much. I was around, and I was friends with people, I guess. My relationship with Dean was very much based on friendship. With Dean and I, it’s just very easy. When we’re in the space creatively, tons of stuff just happens, and we don’t try to define it. When people think there’s a scene ... I don’t really believe that there’s a scene. It’s more creative energies being drawn to one another. That’s what happens in cities. And that just happened with us. A lot of us were in the art world and the underground music spaces playing shows, and we just naturally became friends. With Dean, his work spans all different kinds of categories and mediums. But when I work with him, I can really tap into something very specific within music. It’s so special for me, because it feels very real, rather than trying to be something. It’s kind of intense. It’s very hard to put into words.

I like the word “intense.”

It’s not intense in a bad way. For me, the word I would say is easy, very easy, and I really try to do that in all my work. I try to let it be easy. If I’m trying too hard, it feels like you can start to be distracted by technical issues or formal stuff too much. I think if you allow things to somehow come out of you in an intuitive way, you can look at complex intellectual questions too.

Since recording the new album, has that happened to you?

It’s the same as what I was saying at the beginning of the conversation. We were saying the two things, the intellect and the emotional, right? Allow things to come naturally ... I don’t want to say naturally, but you know what I’m saying...

The immediacy?

Yeah, the immediacy allows me to have deeper conversations with myself about process. When I start to listen back, or edit the work, or put harmonies on the work, I’m actually just thinking about music. I’m not thinking about whether people like it. Is it cool? Does it sound good? Are the lyrics good? I’m just like, this is music. This is happening in the moment, and it’s good because it’s happening without me trying too hard. It’s not didactic or trying to be better than someone else. I don’t overly think about the audience, but my process does try to make sure it allows an audience to feel like it’s happening for them too. A shared moment without being overly analytical. I’m interested in the paradoxes within creativity.

Your music does feel intimate, but also open. There’s this great sense of openness to me.

I do think history is in everything. You know. All my friends who I work with, we’re all interested in the world in a wider context, and in other people’s creativity too. I think that’s why the conversation is happening. I need to research how to describe it more. But I don’t like to get too deep into the philosophical. Then it gets a bit derivative. That’s the best way I can describe it.