Self as Fractal Blogspot Monday Music #42 (Katy Carr) nov 09
This post has been a long time coming. Normally I don’t comment on snippets of songs, but this is an exception. Why? Read on.
I mentioned Katy Carr on this very blog, before the days of Monday Music, when I would just find and deliver.
But those were the days when I’d comment on every song. (Ah, the days!) And so it was at least a year that I knew Katy Carr had a new album coming up, but couldn’t find information online about it, and thus couldn’t post.
Now, this is a somewhat spoiled viewpoint to take. It’s Web 2.0 entitlement. Who said you had to hear every song before the actual thing comes out? Who said there needs to be a constant IV of information, snippet upon snippet, until finally there’s a whole thing made up of the pieces? It adds something, I think, when you go into something blind. Anticipation, maybe. Surprise, whether for good or for bad. But the previews of Katy Carr’s new album “Coquette” were just released, and they’re beyond good.
It’s a theme album, set in the 1940s, and having a theme is an automatic five or so points with me. But there’s still plenty of stylistic variation. “Berliner Ring” and “Army” I’ve already written about, and they’re just as great a year or so later as they were the first time I heard them. On top of that, you have “Kommander’s Car,” the lead single, with just enough playfulness and swagger in the piano not to sink down into the ground, but enough urgency and solemn underpinnings to belie its subject — an escape from Auschwitz. “Sparkle” is spooky, a bit restrained; “Butterfly” alternatingly fluttery and pensive. Then there are “Star Song” and “Sleepyhead,” lovely and lullaby-like, opening and closing the album.
And these are just from 30 seconds or so; 30 seconds of wonderful ambassadorship for the whole thing. It’s staggering how much craft and research has gone into “Coquette.” Just one example: she actually went and contacted Kazimierz Piechowski, the subject of “Kommander’s Car.” That’s going above and beyond. That’s truly caring. And if there’s one thing the world needs, caring would be it. I look forward to hearing it all.