Laura Barrett Gets Big Break on Magnetic Fields Tour

Long accustomed to intimate gigs and living room shows, quirky singer-songwriter-kalimba player Laura Barrett is suddenly taking the stage at large-capacity concert halls across North America as the opening act for indie pop legends the Magnetic Fields. The challenge is enough to put the amicable musician on edge.

"It's a 50-50 split between joy and nerves," Barrett admits to Spinner from her Toronto home before driving to Washington DC for the first date of the tour.

"I don't have a very robust American press machine behind me so I'm hoping this will introduce me to some new people, but it's also a lot more pressure. Right now I'm just mentally preparing myself and practicing like a maniac."

Despite her anxiety, Barrett jumped at the opportunity to support the Magnetic Fields. "It's a trip," she says. "I don't even know how it happened. I didn't seek it out or even know it was a possibility. Then my manager contacted me in early January and asked me if I could do it. I just said, 'of course, I can!'"

Barrett's brand of kalimba-based "neurotic sci-folk" hardly screams mass appeal, but in many ways her idiosyncratic musical approach is a perfect companion to Magnetic Fields' own skewered take on the pop music tradition. "In a way, I think that their new album ['Realism'] is embracing some of the kinds of sounds that I have," says Barrett. "I actually think I hear some kalimba on there."

She's hoping she can build off a similar stretch of support gigs opening for a British singer-songwriter named Scott Matthew. "I played an outdoor festival in Germany to about 3,000 people. It was similar in that I was also opening for a baritone-voiced man who played the ukulele, but I hadn't heard too much of Scott Matthew's music before I played those shows, whereas I own almost the whole Magnetic Fields catalogue."

She also sees the tour as a chance to experiment with her own songwriting. "I'm trying to work on writing in character, which is something Stephin Merritt has perfected. Most people don't realize how hard it is to write from a perspective that's detached from your own. I'd like to write more songs about characters and interactions between people."

The delicate sound of the kalimba may be somewhat lost in a bigger setting, but this allows Barrett to focus on other aspects of her performance that may sometimes go neglected.

"On the one hand I think that my music is really appropriate to intimate settings, but on the other hand in the few times I've played bigger halls I've really been able to have fun with my voice in ways that I'm not able to otherwise. It's great to be able to play with the natural reverberation of a venue and really fill up the space," Barrett says.

"It's all a bit scary, but this really is a fantastic opportunity. I'm just excited to get out there."