As Child Actress, Rena Kozak toes the line between a tangible reality and an infinite universe. While Calgary was her initial foundation, her move to Montreal in 2017 solidified her work not just as a performer and songwriter, but as a sought-out producer and mixing engineer. Having released her latest full-length, Ancestor Worship, last year, Kozak is now sharing the last of the songs she wrote after her boyfriend died in 2012 in the form of an EP entitled Just Fine Never Better.

This year, it became important to Kozak to finish and release the final remaining songs so she can cleanse herself of that phase and see what might happen next. The first two tracks are from early on in her grief phase, while the second two were written in the last couple of years. She wanted to include them on Just Fine Never Better as a way to symbolize forward motion and growth. The EP’s title track was originally written by Kozak’s late boyfriend, Chris Reimer of Women and The Dodos. It’s one that the couple both really liked, and after Reimer’s death, his parents gave Kozak permission to use it with Child Actress.

The official “Just Fine Never Better” music video was filmed in Montreal, QC at Studio Saint Zo and in San Francisco at Musée Mechanique. For a song about staying in, staying sober and taking a night off from the party, this video takes us to a surreal soirée in a psychedelic dream state. Mechanical alter-egos waltz and sing our subconscious thoughts to us while the only thing grounding us to the reality of the human world is a single wind turbine on the horizon. A reminder that even when we let ourselves get swirled away by substances and revelry by night, the wind is always there in the morning as the world turns around us – whether we like it or not.

I struggled to understand what Chris was saying in the lyrics on the cell phone recording of us jamming together – beyond the phrase “we could have a regular time tonight,” I couldn’t make out much else. I had never asked him what he was singing, I was always delicate with Chris and his creative output. He was shy about his songwriting and was just starting to develop lyrics and I didn’t want to push or influence him by prying. I figured he would make the words clear when he was sure of himself. 

I took the one phrase I could hear to be an implication of his desire to slow down on drinking and partying – a concept we had been talking about a lot. His lifestyle on tour was full of alcohol, and we were having a lot of conversations about how when we moved in together we would slow down on the drinking, we would have more “regular nights.” I built a little on the idea that he was musing on this with the song – what would it be like to fall asleep sober and wake up feeling fine… and then, for me, I inserted my own self into the theme of what would it be like to wake up with him still alive that day instead of waking up to find he had passed while I slept. In the end that’s what I made the song about – what if we just went to bed that night and woke up to another day instead? – Rena Kozak of Child Actress on “Just Fine Never Better”