Austra Gigs Are A Gay Sanctuary

Austra vocalist Katie Stelmanis is proud that the band's live shows have become a safe haven for gay fans to feel comfortable at.

“At our shows,” she said in a recent interview with theMusic, “it's really obvious that it's a queer-positive space, and it's somewhere that's really comfortable for queers to hang out. And can kind of be themselves, dress up, have fun, be liberated.”

The openly out artist doesn't think of herself as “politically active” when it comes to matters of homosexuality, but has no qualms speaking her mind on the subject.

“As a queer woman I think that visibility is the most important thing in the queer movement. Visibility makes people comfortable with it, makes people understand it; when people become more familiar with the idea they become less freaked out. I think it's important in my position to talk about it. Surprisingly, there isn't a huge number of people in the indie-rock community who are particularly vocal about it. I don't consider myself to be politically active beyond what I do in music, but talking about it has always seemed really natural to me... I just did a whole bunch of interviews in France, and it was right at the time there was some huge debate about legalising gay marriage, and every single interviewer asked me about it, both being a queer woman and being from Canada.”

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