From Somewhere Above

Kate Bollinger “Postcard From A Cloud”

I love the simple little trick Kate Bollinger pulls off in this song – singing near the bottom of her register in the verses, and at the top of it on the choruses. It’s not heavy-handed at all and it took me a little while to even really notice, but it’s very effective in marking the broader contrast between those two sections. In the verses, which chug along on a relaxed rhythm guitar part, she’s addressing her friends and assuring them “I think about you more than I’m showing.” The chorus is extremely airy, and feels like she’s rising up into the heavens. Her lyrical perspective shifts, she’s not grounded at all, but she’s experiencing something from on high. Pretty good metaphor for the experience of a fairly normal young person who’s suddenly pulled into a life of touring and minor stardom, right?

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Sex Week “Angel Blessings”

“Angel Blessings” is pretty firmly rooted in alt-rock and shoe gaze genre conventions, so it’s more cozy and familiar than musically interesting. (Which is fine, you don’t always need to be original to be good.) But there is something intriguing going on here – oblique lyrical references to living in squalor, fraught sexuality, obscure mysticism, and some lines that suggest drug addiction with some degree of plausible deniability. You can connect the dots a lot of different ways, but the main feeling I get from this song is someone so overcome by desire and need that it’s become a little disgusting to them.

Buy it from Bandcamp.