Saint Agnes’ Kitty A. Austen: The 10 songs that changed my life

Do you like Nine Inch Nails? Good, because so does Kitty A. Austen. But while Trent Reznor is the Saint Agnes’ vocalist’s current obsession, she also loves everything from classic ’00s pop-punk to inspirational art rock…

“My dad loves early R&B and soul music, and so he had tons of Stax records CDs in our house – me and my brother would play them and dance on the sofa. And this was my favourite song. It’s funny to think that I could already relate to feeling melancholy and world-weary at such a young age, but it kind of makes sense, too. I was a very sensitive, weirdly serious kid, and I was drawn to things that had that magical, intrinsically sad, yet hopeful thing going on. Otis Redding’s voice embodies all of that, beauty and melancholy entwined.”

“I was a teenage emo and bought Kerrang! weekly, and that’s how I heard about Good Charlotte. I got hold of this album [The Young And The Hopeless] off a market stall and played it relentlessly on my CD Walkman at school. MP3 players and iPods were very much a thing so I was definitely weird as fuck walking round with that Walkman skipping tracks constantly, playing an album that had been out for, like, five years, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever. It’s hysterical to look back on now. I have always been a loser…”

“The first show where I discovered the band for myself and got myself to the show was Cage The Elephant in a venue called The Hub in Plymouth. I was maybe 16 and went on my own, got the bus, and had my mind blown. Indie rock was the thing when I was a teenager and I fucking hated most of it, it felt swagger-less to me and very boring. But [frontman] Matt Shultz was an antidote to this; he climbed the rigging, crowdsurfed, he looked so free and he had this rock star aura about him which I hadn’t really seen before in the flesh. I was mesmerised.”

“I’d grown up playing guitar and being mocked constantly by teenage boys for not playing complex tapping solos and sweep picking! I just never had the urge to play guitar like that at all, I used my guitar to write songs to express something, but I felt deep inadequacy about it. Hearing this record was such a wake-up moment: it was raw, unpolished, messy guitar playing that sounded better than any guitar I’d ever heard in my life. She has more power and more expression in her little finger than anyone ever, and I found that honesty so much more interesting than technical prowess.”

“I’m interested in unique and distinctive voices, where no-one else in the world could sing their song, where you learn something of the artist’s spirit. Siouxsie Sioux sounds so free and commanding in this song, so strong and so uninterested in conforming to anyone’s expectations. I’m always trying to be free in my expression, but it’s hard. I think when an artist does it, the song feels timeless, like it’s always been there.”

“I passed my driving test this year and have discovered just how great it is to drive myself around blasting music. I’ve been listening to With Teeth over and over at the moment. I get like that about records: I’ll listen to one thing for like six months and obsess over every detail. This is the first song on the album and it changes my mood every time, the piano outro is just so fucking unexpectedly uplifting. It makes me feel euphoric and I sing at the top of my lungs. The song builds to it so beautifully, it’s such a clever release, open, rapturous piano chords with this aggressive vocal straight down the middle. Rage and joy.”

“I wrote this song in the midst of having a very difficult period of mental ill health. I’d gotten really quite unwell with depression and extreme anxiety – Jon [Tufnell, guitar] was so worried about me and he would try to get me to talk to him about what I was feeling. This song came from one of those conversations, I was trying to describe to him how it would all get too much in my brain, racing thoughts and feeling hopeless and terrible about myself and how it would build to a point where I couldn’t keep it all together anymore and I would have a meltdown. I wanted to create a song that lyrically and musically kind of reflected that experience and the aftermath of it. It’s such a difficult thing to admit because, frankly, a lot of it is ugly and awful. But I do think it’s vital to bring these ugly things out in to the light so people feel less alone and hopefully get the help they need without feeling ashamed.”

“There’s so many that could answer this question but I’ve been listening to this obsessively in the last few months. I think this is a perfect song. The relentless drum part, the satisfaction when that halftime comes in, the lovely surprising little piano melodies that cut across the aggression, the most insane vocal delivery. It makes me drive too fast and it makes me feel so euphoric. The way Trent Reznor can make all the parts – which are often disparate – fit together and work together is a puzzle I’m always trying to crack.”

“My mum died very unexpectedly in 2021. We’d been on tour with Skindred and I had literally just walked in the front door, after having been away for two weeks, when I got a phone call from my brother telling me to get back in the car and get down to Devon as my mum had been taken to intensive care and induced into a coma. She died just one week later. I decided in that week, sat by her hospital bed, that I just had to find a way to bring light into what was the darkest moment of my life. I owed it to her, having brought me into the world, to find a way to grow from this terrible thing and reach out into the darkness rather than let it overwhelm me. This song is about that idea: let light in, grow with grief, open yourself to it and you find deep beauty and connection. A death doesn’t have to be the end, it can actually be the beginning – I choose to honour my mum by living like this.”

“I’ve been to too many funerals in the last couple of years which is sad but I have noticed that the best music choices are the ones that really bring the person’s character into your mind. They make everybody smile and laugh and cry all at once because it’s so that person to have chosen that song. My grandad had a Ronan Keating song which was so sweet and funny and weirdly moving. This song would definitely be that for me. I get teased a lot for how much I love Metallica, and have been found passionately arguing on their behalf loads – Napster: Lars was right, snare sound in St Anger: iconic, Lars: essential, etc – and to have this blasting obnoxiously loud as my coffin is walked in would be iconic. I insist on no fade out too, everyone has to be upstanding for the whole song.”

Saint Agnes’ album Bloodsuckers is out now via Spinefarm

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