Texas-born indie singer-songwriter Kaycie Satterfield’s latest EP, Women’s Fiction, explores all aspects of being a female artist – deconstructing everything from performative femininity on tracks like ‘Norma Jean’ to the strange and utterly irrational fiction genre that gives the EP its name, a ‘genre’ that also still manifests itself in the music industry in the form of lumping “all-female” or “female-fronted” bands into their own separate category. The title track is a crushing, potent cry of despair, featuring one of Satterfield’s most moving performances alongside some of her most memorable lyrics. “I’ll keep telling my stories and keep begging someone to listen/ I’ll keep telling my stories, they’ll keep calling it women’s fiction,” she sings on the chorus. Her sound might have changed from her jazz-infused debut Your Favorite Records, as she utilizes more of a classic indie rock sound, but her jazz influences are still evident in the song structures and chord changes. We can’t wait to hear what she has in store for us with her upcoming album.
We caught up with Kaycie for this edition of our Artist Spotlight segment, where we showcase up-and-coming artists and give them a chance to talk a bit about their music.
What got you interested in writing and playing music?
I read that you grew up with an appreciation for jazz music. In what ways has that affected your songwriting?
What were some of the influences behind your new single ‘Women’s Fiction’?
How was the process of writing and recording it?
‘Women’s Fiction’ deals with how female writers – in any field – are not held up to the same standards when telling their stories as men. What prompted to write a song about this issue? Is this something you have experienced yourself?
In what ways should the conversation about gender and music change?
Can you talk a little bit about the EP’s artwork as well?
Yes! I drew them. There’s an article in the New York Times by Chloe Schama entitled “Show Some Spine.” It talks about how there’s “a plague of women’s backs… upon us in the book cover world.” So when it came to making the cover art, I was like, I bet there are some Playboy covers that have silhouettes of women’s backs. And I was right, so they’re all reductions of Playboy covers.
What direction are you taking for the album that’s coming after the EP?
If I’m correct, you’re planning to spend 2020 living entirely in your tour van! What inspired you to want to do that?
Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell: After being given a false release date back in March, the much-anticipated new album by Lana Del Rey is now out. Named after the American artist Norman Rockwell, the album was co-produced by Jack Antonoff, who also co-produced Taylor Swift’s latest album that was released last week, and features contributions from Zach Dawes, Andrew Watt, and longtime Del Rey collaborator Rick Nowels. Six tracks from the album have already been shared since last year, including ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’, ‘Venice Beach’, and ‘Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman to Have – But I Have It’.
Tool, Fear Inoculum: It seemed as if it would never happen. Their first album in 13 years, Fear Inoculum is the prog metal band’s long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s 10,000 Days. The delay was reportedly due to a lawsuit as well as other commitments, while Maynard James Keenan stated that the band’s indecisiveness was also to blame. The concept of the number seven is one of the main themes running through the album, which has seven tracks and is just short of 80 minutes, with each track featuring multiple segments and different time signatures. We got our first taste of the album with the title track, which was released on August 7th.
Common, Let Love: Having just released a memoir titled Let Love Have the Last Word, the iconic American rapper Common is also accompanying it with the release of his 12th musical project after nearly two years of silence. “It’s inspired by the book that I just released. I started this album because my team was like, ‘With the release of the book, maybe you should do some music’ and it kinda really sparked me in a way. This book was something really personal and I was going to places that I never went to in my life. So I was thinking as an artist to be able to do the same thing,” he explained during a listening event. The book has garnered attention as Common opens up about being molested as a child and the trauma that has come with that.
Ezra Furman, Twelve Nudes: Following up last year’s Transangelic Exodus, Ezra Furman has released his 11-track effort Twelve Nudes, which in a press statement was described as a “‘spiritually queer’ punk record”. “It’s the sound of me struggling to admit that I’m not okay with the current state of human civilization, in which bad men crush us into submission,” Furman explains. “Once you admit how bad it feels to live in a broken society, you can start to resist it, and imagine a better one.” Unlike Transangelic Exodus, which explored a lot of the same feelings, the new album was reportedly recorded more quickly and impulsively – “it is “a ‘body’ more than a ‘mind’ record – more animal than intellectual.”
Whitney, Forever Turned Around: This is the indie-folk band’s second full-length release following up their critically acclaimed debut Light Upon the Lake. It came together over several sessions across the US, with producers Bradley Cook (Hand Habits, Hiss Golden Messenger) and Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty) lending a hand to the main duo consisting of lead singing drummer Julien Ehrlich and lead guitarist Max Kakalek.
Following the slight sonic detour that was last year’s Iridescence, Ginger sees Brockhampton combining the self-reflective, slightly melancholic mood of that album with the signature sound of the Saturation trilogy. The album opens with what might be the boy band’s most meditative and affecting single yet, ‘No Halo’: “I’m sure, I’ll find it/ No one help me when my eyes go red,” the chorus goes, while Dom and Merlyn open up about their experiences with depression on the verses. Things get even more emotionally charged on tracks like the stunning ‘Dearly Departed’, which deals with Ameer Van’s departure from the group following sexual abuse allegations: “What’s the point of havin’ a best friend if you end up losing him?” Kevin Abstract laments. There are still playful, upbeat moments here, like the exotic, infectious instrumental on ‘Boy Bye’, or the seamlessly flowing series of tracks that appear in the middle of the album – ‘Heaven Belongs to You’, ‘St. Percy’, and ‘If You Pray Right’ – the last of which is a top-notch Brockhampton banger, with its infectious brass section and hard-hitting lines. While the album hits a bit of a dud with the title track and ‘Love Me for Life’, it ends on a high note with the heartfelt closer, named after a new collaborator, Victor Roberts, who tackles his troubling history with the police: “I ain’t gon’ see my parents for ages/ All this erosion, no more protection/ Shit don’t feel safe/ What graduation? What degrees?/ What dissertation? What imagination?/ Imagine my whole world taken away from me.” On Ginger, Brockhampton embrace maturity more than ever before, without abandoning the qualities that threw them onto the map in the first place.
Unsurprisingly, the first two singles of Swift’s seventh studio album are somewhat misleading. ‘You Need to Calm Down’ and ‘ME!’, as cartoonishly bad as they are, were bound to earn traction for the album, but they don’t represent what it’s about as a whole, both in terms of quality and attitude. Unlike her unsuccessful foray into modern pop with 2017’s Reputation, Lover has a light, airy quality that renders it one of Swift’s most enjoyable albums to date, as she remains mostly within her comfort zone, singing about new love in a series of simple, straightforward pop tunes. There are two main issues with the record: one, it is kind of a mixed bag, and it could have easily been Swift’s best record if half a dozen of its 18 tracks had been cut. Secondly, it is somewhat inconsistent in quality, mainly due to the fact that it alternates between a few producers. The tracks co-produced with Jack Antonoff are clearly superior, from the stunning ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’ to the atmospheric ‘The Archer’ and the sweet ‘Paper Rings’ (there’s also a welcome contribution from St. Vincent on ‘Cruel Summer’), while those by Joel Little are generally less good (with the exception of the ‘The Man’ and ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’, though that is mostly due to Swift’s smart songwriting). Still, it’s nice to see Swift mostly leaving the drama behind to look in the mirror and focus on the things that matter: “I forgot that you existed/ And I thought that it would kill me, but it didn’t/ And it was so nice/ So peaceful and quiet,” she sings on the opening track.
The title of Jay Som’s new record means “my child” in Tagalog, and while it was inspired by a text she received from her mother, who often refers to her as such, it fits nicely with the mood of the album and the creative process as a whole. Often labeled a bedroom pop artist due to the intimate, home-made vibe of her music, the songs on the follow-up to her excellent 2017 breakout, Everybody Works, feel like they were treated with a comforting, motherly kind of care. But as dream pop goes, they are also impressively refined and polished in terms of production – look no further than the shoegaze-inspired ‘Superbike’ or the standout ‘Nighttime Drive’ – reflecting the kind of maturity that comes through in the lyrics. “I’m feeling like we’ve just begun/ Nothing’s ever good enough/ Tenderness is all I’ve got,” Duterte sings on the groovy ‘Tenderness’, while the heart-wrenching closer ‘Get Well’ sees her tackling alcoholism: “Get well/ I hope you can/ How do you find peace/ With a drink in your hand?”. Anak Ko may not be as sonically varied and exciting as Everybody Works, but it’s still a stunning work of dream pop to sink your head into.
Ghost Orchard, the project of 21-year-old singer-songwriter Sam Hall, has assembled a truly unique sound that can best be described as lo-fi bedroom trap. Quite a departure from his earlier noise pop releases, bunny is more refined and mature, as Hall evocatively and interestingly fuses lo-fi production reminiscent of Sparklehorse, acoustic guitar melodies akin to the likes of Mount Eerie and Elliott Smith, and modern hip-hop-inspired beats a Brockhampton fan might enjoy. But unlike the epidemic of sad boys employing a similarly depressive sound, Hall sings about being in love and growing into adulthood in all its wonderful complexity with a sense of young innocence and hope, while his heartfelt lyrics are rendered even sweeter via his understated but earnest delivery. “Never heard my heartbeat quite like this,” he repeats on highlight ‘station’, his voice as warm as a blanket over a shimmering, driving beat. These tracks feel like little snippets, memories captured and repackaged with a romantic sheen of youthful nostalgia. It’s not hard to imagine Ghost Orchard releasing a classic album a few years down the road as he grows artistically, but he’s already come up with a singular and distinctly contemporary aesthetic.
