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The press material for BABYGIRLGALACTIC describes it as “a full-length autobiographical concept album exploring sexual and relationship trauma and recovery.” But while Cochrane is open about the fact that trauma and recovery were behind the songs, she stops short of sharing what was behind the trauma and need for recovery in the first place.

“I won’t go into the nitty-gritty,” she says. “But I will say it wasn’t just one thing. The way I described it to someone else was that there was one really, really big thing and then like one thing after another after that. So it just compounded. So I never got the space to process the first thing. After awhile, it was like ‘Is this like a thriller movie? What is happening here?’ ”

Whatever it was, the process of writing the lyrics was cathartic. Most of the 13 songs began life as journal entries and Cochrane says she often felt like she was “creating the score for the movie of my life.”

“I didn’t really know I was writing an album until my brother asked if I wanted to record our album,” she says with a laugh.

Her brother is Taylor Cochrane, who leads veteran Calgary act 36? and took the helm for Future Womb’s debut as producer. Mikaela and her older brother grew up in a musical household, with parents who were adamant that both take piano lessons as children. Both played in school bands. Mikaela first ambition was to become a triple-threat stage performer and attended Mount Royal’s now defunct theatre performance program. She continues to act — recently she can be seen as the naive and delusional Cassandra, the Paladin in Spencer Estabrooks’ Dungeons and Dragons-inspired comedy webseries One Hit Die — and also performs burlesque under the name Lily Bo Pique. The Broken City show will likely be the last Calgary date for awhile, as Cochrane plans to head to Vancouver at the end of the month to further her acting career. That doesn’t mean Future Womb will go on hiatus. She hopes to tour with the band and eventually head back into the studio for a followup to BABYGIRLGALACTIC.