Album Review: Katie Gavin - What A Relief

And it is the name of a playlist that Hanif Abdurraqib assembled, and shared, near the top of 2022—and it is a sentiment, I think, that I perhaps always understood, or at least came to have a better understanding of in the last four or five years. 

And it would have been a little over two years ago when I was giving consideration to how I wished to write about the self-titled album from the trio Muna—an album that is, often, very fun, and wishes that us, as listeners, will have fun along with it as we experience it, but it is also an album that is, at times, extremely thoughtful and courses with deeply resonant emotion. 

It isn’t sad—well, I don’t think that it is intended to be sad. There is, as there often is, in contemporary popular music, a few rather devastating songs tucked in near the conclusion. 

What I am getting at here, already becoming a little weighed down with ambition in my approach, and so I do apologize, is the song “Kind of Girl”—mid-tempo, country adjacent in its aesthetic—is not intentionally sad, or heartbreaking, so much as it is bittersweet. It’s gorgeous. It soars in the places where it needs to. It’s poignant in a way that is still accessible, or isn’t intimidating in what it wishes to explore as it unfolds. It’s hopeful, yes, or like a triumph, if you will, but there is a tinge of melancholy to the self-reflection it offers.

I tell you all of that to tell you this. A little over two years ago, I was giving consideration to how I wished to write about the self-titled album from Muna. And one of my ways into the record was to give consideration to a kind of feeling which, at the time, I used the Maggie Rogers song “Light On,” from Heard It In A Past Life, as an example of a song that did conjure a similar feeling. 

And it is a feeling that can be akin to the notion of both running toward something, while also running away from that very same thing. That thing, and this is an aside, we are both sprinting towards and away from, is, of course, most often ourselves. But what I am wishing to describe here is the feeling of being compelled, or pulled, not exactly towards the unknown. 

But being offered a moment of escape, maybe. Or a distraction, however temporary. 

Something that takes us out of what we know, and lures us into something we are less familiar with, but we find alluring. And in that allure, there is something—the feeling, you see, that we allow ourselves to surrender to.

And in that surrender, we are provided the opportunity to, for perhaps just a few minutes, to move further away from, or forget about completely, what weighs us down.

And in that surrender, however long of brief it does ultimately end up being, there is a beautiful kind of catharsis that occurs. 

Sad, but willing to dance.

*

And I have of course, over time, thought about how someone can separate themselves from what they are most known for, in the effort of pursuing something else, outside of that. 

I don’t believe it to be easy, by any means, to try and establish your own identity, as an artist, outside of the work that you do, or what you contribute to the larger whole of a group. 

And the idea of the solo album is not a new one. And I think about how, in the last 20 years even, a performer—often the lead singer of a band—who is then so synonymous with the act that they front, has approached the idea of striking out on their own, and what they perhaps hoped to achieve in doing so.

I think about Chino Moreno—who has not released any music under his own name, but outside of his role as the unmistakable and dynamic voice of the “art-metal” outfit, the Deftones, has launched a number of side projects (Team Sleep, Palms, and Crosses) where he, as he does with his day job, contributes vocals. And I think about how all of these endeavors are different, or how he, as the artist, perhaps wishes that these projects would be perceived a specific way, and not held in comparison. 

I think about how there are similarities, though, or overlaps, between Moreno’s involvement in projects like Crosses (which is still currently active) or Team Sleep (which has been long defunct) and what he does with the band he has fronted for over 30 years.

Because regardless of the urge not to, as listeners, we do find ourselves making comparisons, or searching for similarities.

I think about Matt Berninger—the soothing, dulcet baritone voice of The National, who released a solo album in late 2020, Serpentine Prison, a collaborative effort of sorts with the legendary soul and R&B musician Booker T. Jones, who served as producer worked on the album’s arrangements. The album, then, is similar to the canonical work of The National because of Berninger’s voice, and his self-deprecating lyricism, but musically, not a night and day difference from the dramatic and swooning “indie rock elder statesmen” bombast that the band he founded in 1999 has developed a penchant for, but different enough, in the sense that Serpentine Prison was, anecdotally, a much more relaxed or restrained affair, musically speaking.

I think about Hayley Williams—the charismatic front woman of the long-running pop group Paramore, who released two albums under her own name, the moody and sprawling Petals for Armor in the spring of 2020, and then a companion album recorded at the height of the pandemic, Flowers for Vases, issued the following year—the former, edgier, I think, or at least darker in tone than her work fronting Paramore; the latter, much more inward turned, and sparser in its instrumentation.

And I do think about Thom Yorke¹—the lead singer of Radiohead, the band that, at current, he seems like he can not get far enough away from². Yorke first began his solo output in 2006 when he released the glitchy, skittering, and blistering The Eraser, which he followed with two additional, and perhaps a little less memorable, solo outings—2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, and Anima, from 2019. And he, like Chino Moreno of the Deftones, has spent time founding other projects—Yorke assembled a five-piece, Atoms for Peace, originally to serve as his band to tour material from The Eraser, then recording one album with them, Amok, over a decade ago, and most recently he’s spent his time a the helm of a trio, The Smile, joined by jazz drummer Tom Skinner, and his Radiohead bandmate, the virtuosic multi-instrumentalist Johnny Greenwood. 

The albums Yorke has released under his own name are all very, very electronic in their sound, so while his voice is certainly familiar and I would consider to be iconic in contemporary popular music, the instrumentation is inherently different enough that there is a distinction between that work, and Radiohead. There are ways, of course, to differentiate The Smile from Radiohead, also, though perhaps a little more difficult to do. Or, maybe, there are arguably more noticeable similarities between the two. 

The idea of the solo album is not a new one. And I think about how a performer, often the lead singer of a band, who may, or may not, be synonymous with the act that they front, as approached the idea of striking out on their own, and what they perhaps hoped to achieve in doing so.

What do they wish to tell us, as listeners, outside of what they have told us before, in the work that they do with a group.

What do they wish to tell us—how will it be similar, yes. But, how will it be different. 

*

I spent more time than I should have, and, I mean, I still spend more time than anyone, perhaps, should be, over two years later, thinking bout the way Katie Gavin sings the word “dandelion.” 

And it is such a small detail, ultimately, in the fabric of the song “Kind of Girl,” from Muna’s self-titled album. Because there is so much, within the song, that is worth unpacking, or giving consideration to. 

But the more time I spent with the song, in advance of the album’s arrival in the summer of 2022—it was one of three singles issued ahead of Muna’s release, the more time I came to understand all of the weight the way Gavin sings a single word held, and still continues to hold. 

Dandy-lion 

It’s difficult to articulate, I think. Or, rather, at the time, when Muna was released and I spent a number of weeks sitting with the album in order to gather my thoughts, it was difficult for me to find the words to describe why the delivery of a single word was so impactful. 

Because what I think is that there is something hopeful about it. A kind of optimism, or want. A kind of carefreeness. A feeling that I will never really understand, or truly know. But in that, there is a wistfulness. And the hint, or implication, or something tragic. 

It’s not intentionally sad. I don’t think. It is charming. And in that charm, it of course ends up being heartbreaking and bittersweet in how it lands.

I’m a girl who’s blowing on a dandelion thinking how the winds could change at any given time

Musically, “Kind of Girl” did not seem out of place, exactly, in the sequencing of Muna—it’s a dynamic album that gave the group an opportunity to, yes, expand on the success of the album’s opening track and infectious single, “Silk Chiffon,” but to show how much they had grown in confidence in the years between it, and its predecessor, 2019’s Saves The World. They became a much sharper band, and you can really hear that in how the self-titled album refuses to remain in one place for very long, and just how big everything sounds, comparatively. 

And so, within the dynamism in sound, a slow tempo, twangy, and yearning ballad did not seem terribly out of place, but even when the album turns itself inward again, near the conclusion, there is nothing else like “Kind of Girl” on the album. 

It makes sense, then, I think, that What A Relief, the apparently long-gestating solo debut from Muna’s lead vocalist, Katie Gavin, could be described similarly—slower tempos, twangy, and yearning. It is a genuinely interesting collection of material, featuring songs that Gavin has written over the last seven years—the oldest, “Casual Drug Use” (one of the album’s advance singles) was penned in 2016—and with some having been written and brought to the other members of Muna for consideration to be included on the self-titled album. 

Given that these dozen songs were written over the course of such a long period of time, What A Relief covers myriad ideas or themes, and in doing so, it serves as a time capsule of sorts. Not one of an artist finding their voice. Not in the slightest. As the de facto leader of Muna, even on the band’s debut from a decade ago, Gavin seemingly has never had an issue finding her voice as a performer, and a songwriter. But rather, it is a time capsule of an artist looking for, and then successfully locating, their voice outside of what they are known for. 

An establishment of an identity outside of a larger whole. 

Forgoing the slick, electro-pop sheen of Muna, What A Relief is, overall, a quiet collection of songs. It takes rollicking and even dark turns throughout, and with Gavin’s songwriting being rather introspective, the album’s arranging often leans into that, guiding itself into folk and bluegrass-tinged instrumentation at times. 

Muna, and retrospectively, Saves The World and the trio’s debut, And U, are all rather bold and surprising albums, but there is a pop bombast to them. What A Relief is, too, bold and surprising, though save for a few moments when it does allow itself to raise its voice or become a little raucous or unruly, it operates from a hushed, restrained place. It’s thoughtful, and earnest—unflinchingly so, in what Gavin depicts in her lyricism. 

I am guilty of perhaps overusing the expression that an album “holds a mirror up to the human condition,” or maybe I just easily find humanistic qualities in too much contemporary pop music. But, it is a very human, very personal record, with Gavin reflecting on love and lust, and the places where those things intersect, heartbreak and anguish, and maybe the most surprising, or unexpected thing, generational trauma—writing, and singing, about all of it with an effervesce and graciousness.

*

And so there is certainly a thoughtful nature of Gavin’s songwriting across the board on What A Relief, but there is a thoughtfulness that operates from within the album’s sequencing as well. I am, in listening carefully, or closely, or as analytically as I do, often searching for recurring themes, or ideas, both within the lyricism, as well as within an album’s arranging—small, regularly subtle things that connect parts of an album back to itself.

There are of course, lyrical ideas that recur on What A Relief, but what was noticeable upon my initial listen were the similarities, and the differences, between the songs that begin each side—“I Want It All,” the album’s smoldering, pensive opening track, and the bleak, harrowing “Sketches,” that arrives at the top of side two, and is a lyrical inverse when compared to how the album opens. 

“Sketches” begins with the gentle, methodical, and resonant plucks of the acoustic guitar strings. It doesn’t move quickly, per se, but even as somber as it is, it still has movement pushing it forward, with a haunting melody that forms in the notes coming from the guitar shortly before Gavin’s voice arrives for the first verse. “Sketches,” like a number of other tunes on the record, is skeletal or sparse in the instrumentation Gavin uses—here, a bouncing, but subdued bass line rings out, as well as the mournful ripples of both the cello, and a low, emotionally stirring synthesizer tone. 

One thing that is remarkable about What A Relief is the way Gavin uses her voice—how she plays with ranges and inflections in these songs that she has not really explored in her work within Muna. A song like “Sketches” comes from an understandably fragile place. Her voice is delicate, practically on the verge of breaking, with a palpable kind of trepidation in her delivery, as she walks back through the tumultuous conclusion of a relationship—and more than the conclusion though, the difficulty and discomfort that arrives when you understand that things should come to an end.

Gavin doesn’t waste any time getting to the crux of “Sketches,” laying it all out within the first verse. “I’ve seen paintings that are real lives, and I’ve seen real lives that are just sketches,” she sings quietly, with her words held and sustained, tumbling with precision into the gentle plucks of the guitar underneath. “I can say because I’ve been inside of them,” she adds before arriving at the moody, slightly dissonant chorus. “The deeper you go, the smaller you get,” she warns. “You’re a line on a road, and a point on a pen.”

“Sketches,” in the second verse, becomes a lot starker in what it depicts. 

“Thought my love for you was all time—turns out, all that time, I never loved you,” Gavin confesses. “Some of us can make a sketch of love to fall into, and I did.”

“But love makes you grow,” she warns in the second chorus. “So it never quite fit. That the deeper I go, the smaller I get.”

In a lengthy profile with Gavin on Paste, it is revealed that the relationship depicted in “Sketches” is one she has been away from for “some time now.” “But she doesn’t feel the urge to counteract the feeling by giving it a modern-day touch-up,” writer Matt Mitchell explains. “Even if she is no longer the same person who wrote it.”

“In my experience so far as a songwriter, I generally write about experiences a little bit better once I am a certain amount of time removed from them,” Gavin is quoted as saying in the piece. “I find that I can’t see, really, what’s going on until I’ve had some space—especially if it’s about a relationship that is emotionally distressing. Sometimes that’s fascinating to hear, from someone who’s inside of something, but I think, on a lot of this record, there’s a little bit of distance there. Sometimes, that’s actually how you can be more honest about what’s really going on.”

There is resolve in the end, on “Sketches,” though it is subtle, in the song’s final, somber verse, with Gavin making small strides towards reclaiming herself. “Went out walking just to see the sunrise,” she recalls. “Stayed the same size—turned pink and orange—I can say, ‘cause I’ve been painting myself back.”

*

And I have written, certainly at length, in the past few years, about my experience in therapy, and about the idea of putting in “The Work”—the things that we do, or the efforts that we continue to make, to better ourselves, or to grow, or to discover something about ourselves.

The thing about therapy is while, yes, it can, and it often does, feel “good” or maybe just offers a little bit of relief for the hour you have, to be able to talk with someone about the crisis of the week, as I often call it, or lamenting about something more immediate or urgent, part of “The Work,” and this is perhaps the most difficult part of it, is unpacking portions of the past to better understand how that has impacted you—for better or for worse—today.

Perhaps the expression “generational trauma” is overused, and it is something that I had not given real consideration to until my therapist would, occasionally, use our time together to ask me questions about my childhood and my upbringing—conversations that would ultimately be difficult to have because they ask you to confront things about your past you may otherwise not wish to. About circumstances you should have not been exposed or privy to. About unpredictable behavior and what can clearly be described as emotional abuse. And in not even having a better understanding of that, but just an understanding that there are these things you did not inherit, exactly, but that you have brought with you, unbeknownst, it offers the chance for you to see how all of that maybe did not impact you directly at the time, but did in the long term, and has, unfortunately, contributed to some of your more unflattering characteristics. 

Family, and what we inherit, and how we try to break ourselves out of these patterns, or what we learned without realizing it, are ideas that Gavin presents throughout What A Relief—most explicitly in the album’s first half on the folk and western tinged “The Baton.” She repeats that, both in aesthetic, and in theme, in the second half, on the introspective “Inconsolable,” which was the third and final single released ahead of What A Relief’s arrival in full.

And I have, within the last year or two, written more and more about the difference between a “love song” in the traditional sense of the description, or what you think of, when you think of a “love song,” and songs about love. Because yes, certainly, there are places where those things do overlap, and are the same. But what I am more interested in are the differences—because a song that is about love isn’t necessarily going to be about the good things, or the positive things. It can be, and often is, about the challenges. About the frustrations. About heartbreak. 

For the generational trauma that Gavin wishes to unpack in “Inconsolable,” it is also a song about love—or the trauma is set against the backdrop of a positive relationship which makes it one of the more hopeful, or optimistic songs on What A Relief. 

Musically, throughout What A Relief, Gavin does steer the instrumentation into folksy, or twangier territory, and it does often lend itself well to the kind of personal, and often confessional songwriting that she is doing here. “Inconsolable” wastes no time arriving in that sound—arguably pushing beyond a “twang” and into a real bluegrass tradition, opening with the loose strum of the acoustic guitar, with the song’s melody bowed out dramatically on the fiddle, and the gentle shimmering echoes of the mandolin—respectively contributed by guests Sara and Sean Watkins of the popular bluegrass trio, Nickel Creek. 

The song, then, structurally, follows the formula that does really work for that aesthetic—musically, the verses grow quiet, which allows the strength in Gavin’s vocal performance to ring out clearly, with the instruments, as well as subtle background vocals from the Watkins siblings, building naturally and the swelling in a rather beautiful, graceful, and heartfelt way during the song’s infectious, if not a little saccharine, chorus. 

There is a bit of a winking nature to the lyricism of “Inconsolable,” meaning Gavin takes a serious concept, and delivers it in a way that is not “unserious,” but is certainly intended to be playful (the song’s bouncing, twangy arranging helps with that) and does make its depiction of ultimately of feeling difficult to love a little easier, or lighter, to hear.

In the same profile in Paste, Gavin explains that the song asks what it means to come from a household that, as she states, “lingered without closeness,” and it is that kind of cumbersome fumbling for intimacy—both emotional, and physical, that she is striving towards.

“You said, ‘Stay with me, and we’ll fall asleep,’” she begins. “I was sitting on the couch and I put my hood up. Couldn’t it let it be. Couldn’t let you see—if I could have done better, then you know I would’ve.”

And there is a difference, between a “love song,” and a song that is about love. 

There are places where the two overlap and even within the context of an album like What A Relief, there are moments where a song can be both. “Inconsolable,” though, in a number of ways, is a song about love. Both the love, or the need for a kind of familiar, comforting love that was perhaps not provided as much, or in a way that was needed, to Gavin in her adolescence, but also it depicts the difficulties that inevitably arise within a romantic partnership, and within the unflattering, or less savory things we see in ourselves, or recognize about ourselves, we see them in others as well, even if they don’t always.

“You do it too,” Gavin exclaims to the off-stage character in “Inconsolable.” “When you’re in the mood—you go hidin’ n your house, tryin’ to be on your own savior. Why can’t you see,” she continues. “I love you even when you’re acting out on your worst behavior.”

The moment when everything in the song swoons together is in the chorus—tilting fully into the bluegrass, folksy trappings, it is infectious in its melody, and there is a kind of comfort in the twang that gently hangs on all of it, which doesn’t exactly “dress up” or disguise the messaging, but it does make it just a little more accessible, providing it the chance to land with a little more grace, and sink in slowly.

“We’re from a long line of people we’d describe as inconsolable,” Gavin confesses. “We don’t know how to be helped. We’re from a whole huddle of households—full of beds where nobody cuddled,” she adds, in a line that, yes, I do understand the intent behind but is still a moment that takes me briefly out of the song³, but maybe I will become more fond of the longer I sit with it. “We don’t know how to be held.”

In further pushing the song, and it’s aesthetic, into a kind of “down home,” or folksy place, the next line also is one that takes me out of the song, briefly but, unlike the previous one, the sentiment behind this one resonate with me more. “I’ve seen baby lizards run into the river when they open their eyes,” Gavin explains. “Even though no one taught them how, or why. So, maybe when you kiss me, I can let you see me cry. And if we keep going by the feeling, we can get by.”

I often, and perhaps too often, look at albums, or specific moments within an album, as being either hopeful, or not. Not hopeless, exactly. But teetering towards it in the absence of optimism or light. What A Relief is certainly not a hopeless or pessimistic record—it is unflinchingly honest, and in that honesty, there are places like this where there are brilliant flashes of hope that Gavin instills in us as listeners.

*

I am hesitant to say that What A Relief thrives when it finds Gavin working from within this kind of truly rootsy, folk-inspired sound because the album truly thrives from beginning to end, regardless of the aesthetic that has been adopted. What I would say is that the album is most genuinely interesting when Gavin explores other soundscapes—the result of which often gives the album a little more enthusiasm and momentum.

The penultimate track, “Keep Walking”—the song where the album takes its titular phrase from, is one of those moments, where Gavin, musically, embraces a sound that is a little more robust in comparison to other places on What A Relief, with a dreamy, hazy kind of quality to it, built around large, spacious strums of the acoustic guitar and a lightness overall to how the song gently tumbles around. 

There, of course, is a sense of humor to be found in Gavin’s songwriting. You can hear it in certain moments in her work with Muna, like the snarky opening line to the bombastic single, “Anything But Me,” and there are traces of that same snark, and self-deprecation, in “Keep Walking,” which, outside of the way it is arranged, makes it among the most compelling and lyrically thoughtful and evocative of this collection.

Something that I have been certainly aware of in my efforts of putting in “The Work” but something that I do not, for myriad reasons, give as much thought to as it would perhaps behoove me to, is the role I play in, for lack of a better expression, my own misfortunes. 

I have shortcomings. They have been pointed out to me in a number of different ways. It’s not fun to hear, certainly. But I understand them and acknowledge them as I am able. And you continue to put in “The Work” with the hopes that you can grow as a person, which is, at least in part, what “Keep Walking” is about—Gavin coming to terms with the role she has played in what caused the end of a relationship. 

There is humor laced throughout “Keep Walking,” but the opening line is bold and truly one for the ages. “I saw your mom in my dream,” Gavin begins. “She called me an asshole and I felt released. And out of the blue, came a new clarity,” she reveals. “I’ve done to you’ll that you’ve done to me.”

“I won’t look at you online—once in a while, I’ll want to know if you’ve died,” Gavin smirks in the second verse. “I hope you’re alive and your rent is still cheap. I hope you get twice all I’ve received.”

The undercurrent of humor, to cut through the tension of what is depicted, is well done, and is bold, yes, but the boldest I think comes from reflections in the chorus. “Oh, what a relief,” she exclaims. “To know that some of this was my fault. I am not a victim, after all. I’m at peace with you and if I ever see you on the street, I’ll just keep walking.”

*

Some days, you do your best.

Some days, you do what gets you out of bed.

And something that I have written about a lot, actually, over the last five years, and something that I find myself giving consideration to, is the idea of trying. 

How we are encouraged to, or perhaps expected to, by others, to try, day to day.

How we wish for ourselves to try. Not even our best. No. But just to show up. And make an attempt. 

Because some days, you do your best. Or, are capable of much more.

Some days, everything seems impossible.

There is a salacious nature to titling a song, “Casual Drug Use.” I understand that. The song is about much more than that, of course. But it is an expression that does get your attention, and it is an expression that Gavin has structured into the soaring, explosive, writhing melody within the chorus—not as an aside, exactly, but it is also not the most important thing that she utters in these enthusiastic, swirling moments of the song.

The second of three singles released ahead of What A Relief, and one of the oldest songs written to have ultimately found its way onto the record, it is one of the most inherently exuberant songs here—livelier, especially in the rollicking, anthemic chorus, than really anything else. But it is a bit of a slow burn to arrive at those moments when the song does take off.

I have had an ongoing discussion with my best friend, for at least the last year, and potentially longer than that, about the way she and I both listen to popular music. Because I am often someone who is not able to listen without analysis, I end up scouring over the lyrics, or am often drawn to them when first hearing a song. She, in turn, is a “vibe-based” listener and takes into consideration the feeling of the song overall rather than picking it apart element by element the way I do. 

Listening for, or at least learning to appreciate, the overall feeling or “vibe” of a song is something I am still working on, but I am getting there, and it has helped me to both enjoy a song simply for what it is more than I was capable of doing in the past, and because I am just unable to shut off the analytical nature of my brain completely, it has helped me to better understand the structure and balance within a song, and how that is executed.

I tell you all of that to tell you this. “Casual Drug Use” is both a vibe-based song and it is not.

It isn’t, because the lyrics of the song are worth reflecting upon, and analyzing. But it is, because of the way it is constructed—it’s smart. Like a razor-sharp kind of intelligence in how it bends and weaves the melody within and in how it plays with the idea of tension and release, simmering and slinking, before exploding in the enormous, shout-a-long chorus. 

Musically, “Casual Drug Use” is among the album’s most playful—the creeping “Sanitized,” which arrives at the halfway point, is another one of those moments, though it does skirt on the edge of dissonance as it does so. Here, the verses do quite literally swirl and slither, with clattering, subtle percussive elements, and folksy acoustic guitar strums, conjuring an effortless groove that does, in a coy way, more than a suggestive way, uses a single finger in a “come hither” kind of motion, and beckons you out into the darkness of a dance floor to writhe slowly in time. 

Because of the way the song unfolds musically, it is easy to lose focus of the lyrics. It moves along quickly, as it spirals, and the emphasis is certainly on the urge to scream along to the chorus. But there is a deeply personal narrative woven into “Casual Drug Use” that is certainly worthy of acknowledging. 

It, like “Sketches,” and certainly like other songs on What A Relief, finds present-day Gavin revisiting an older version of herself. “Casual Drug Use,” written upwards of eight years ago, and certainly more emergent at that time, is treated with a kind of tenderness for the idea of the past self, as she recalls, vividly but with a little bit of poetic ambiguity, a tumultuous time, the desire to change but the uncertainty of how to do so, and an unhealthy coping mechanism.

And yes, of course, it is fun to get caught up in the jubilant momentum of the chorus. “It’s a little unnerving how fast I’ll fall back into fixing my issues with casual drug use,” Gavin bellows. “But I’m not gonna lose it, cause we’re not going to get wherever we’re going, right this moment,” she continues. 

That kind of longing, within the story, is then revisited in the smoldering, bittersweet bridge. “We were looking over across the freeway at downtown,” Gavin recalls. “She said sometimes it’s harder to come back home than to come down. And for some strange reason, I found that very hysterical. And I thought maybe I’ll change tomorrow, but if I don’t…” she continues, allowing the song to slide right back into the final chorus.

There is of course a seriousness or something that is not really meant to be made light of throughout “Casual Drug Use,” regardless of how the song’s arranging attempts to mask that. And part of that seriousness or starkness is in a line from within the first verse, and is without a doubt one of the most resonant lyrics on the album as a whole. Gavin doesn’t treat it as an aside to the listener or a throwaway exactly, but it is not something that is lingered on in the moment. 

“Some days, you do your best. Some days, you do what gets you out of bed.”

Something that I have written bout a lot over the last five years and something that I do regularly find myself giving consideration to is the idea of trying. And how we are encouraged to do so, or, perhaps, expected to do so, by others. 

About how we wish it for ourselves. To try. Not even our best. No. Because there are days when that is certainly not the case. But just to show up. And make an effort. 

It’s a line that is not lingered on, and perhaps smartly so, because it does cast even the slightest, somber shadow over a song that, while wading through difficult subject matter, longs to surrender to something much larger, albeit fleeting. That moment. When you are able to lose yourself in the darkness and move in time to the rhythm and forget about what may be holding you back or troubling you. 

Sad, but willing to dance.

Some days, you do your best. Some days, you do what gets you out of bed.

*

And I used to think about it more, certainly, and it is something that I do still think about, from time to time, but there is this quote from an episode of the final season of “The Wire,” where the character of Bubbles, an addict, now working towards recovery, is speaking to a Narcotics Anonymous group. The character—truly one of the only characters in the show who receives any kind of redemption or “happy” ending, finishes telling a story about loss, and ends it with, “Ain’t no shame in holding to grief. Just as long as you make room for other things too.”

Somebody told me once, a long time ago, that there was a space where grief and joy could coexist. And for a while, I was desperate to find it. Or at least I thought I was. It seemed urgent to do so. The place where remembering did not bring so much pain, or felt so visceral in sorrow. I spent a number of years wondering if there was a space like that for me, where I could still grieve, but the memories wouldn’t be as heavy. 

Without realizing it, I found I had stopped looking for that. It’s not that I don’t believe it exists. I would like to think that it does. But maybe it is just not a space I am meant to find. I am remiss to say that I made peace with the grief that I have carried, but you do, or at least I did, inevitably have to accept it, and what that was going to feel like going forward.

I tell you all of that to tell you this. I was surprised, and quite moved, honestly, by “Sweet Abby Girl,” a gentle, and heartfelt ode that Gavin has tucked into the final third of the album.

The thing about there not being any shame in holding on to grief is this—sometimes, it seems impossible to make room for other things. And I lived a number of years that way. Barely able, if at all, to find room for anything other than sorrow. 

And I have, as I have been able to, and maybe, even, with some success at times, written about it. Or, rather, it has informed things that I have written. And so it is extremely admirable that Gavin has, with real tenderness and honesty, penned a song like “Sweet Abby Girl,” as a means of working towards that space where grief and joy coexist, and ultimately converge.

“Sweet Abby Girl” begins quietly, and takes a little bit of time to find its way, or its rhythm. It opens with the low sound of a bunch of synthetic squiggling sounds that create a sense of whimsy, slowly giving way to the muted piano notes that start to give the song some shape. And musically, given the nature of the subject, the song knows exactly what it is doing as it builds, with slight percussive thudding arriving to really cement the song’s momentum, and shimmering guitar strums—all of it rushing together after the first chorus, and creating something that is emotionally stirring. Dramatic, even, in how the drums come tumbling in, and a hopeful but melancholic piano progression dances along the top of it all. 

The song, with how it is constructed, does not play its hand all at once, though, and it does manage to spread that kind of emotional, stirring rush out across its three-minute run time, allowing that rush to recede back, and the song to grow quiet and ripply again during the verses, and even into the chorus, and saving that build up for the space that comes after Gavin’s final line.

Grief, and loss, are not easy things to write about. And they are not easy things to write about well or with the kind of grace, honesty, and humility that Gavin shows them. “Sweet Abby Girl” is What A Relief’s most sentimental song, certainly, but what it is about speaks to a large part of me—specifically, the grief that I have been carrying around, often uncertain what to do with. 

Gavin’s voice is layered—you can hear her clearly, but there is a metallic, warbled trail that follows her words. It isn’t distracting—no, not exactly. But it is, like, one of the few things on the album that I would say I could do without in an otherwise wonderful and thoughtful song. The words, then, follow a natural rise and fall, with her almost tentatively working them into a melody.

There is a vivid nature to what Gavin depicts in “Sweet Abby Girl,” and it doesn’t really play with any kind of ambiguity, though the reveal of the titular Abby comes in the last line of the first verse. “She’s taking up most of the mattress,” she recalls wistfully. “Can’t imagine being so unselfconscious. She’s pushing her back up against my legs. I wake up because she is screaming—out because it is six in the morning, and she’s standing up, breathing into my face.”

While Gavin poses with a cat on the cover of What A Relief, the liner notes reveal that Abby is a dog she lived with, and as she explains in the heartfelt chorus of the song, she lived with Abby for a short amount of time. 

The kind of admirable humility, and the way Gavin captures the very small, quiet moments that someone shares when living with a companion animal, really arrived the imagery within the second verse. “There’s sleep in the pink of her eyelids—absent-minded, I reached to tend to it,” she sings tenderly. “Historically, that kind of thing put me off—with her, it just felt like a privilege. And if I ever did have my moments,” she continues, alluding to the inevitable times when, despite our best efforts, we lose our patience. “She’d pay no mind to the time we’d lost.”

“Sweet Abby girl,” Gavin coos at the start of the swaying chorus, before treading the line between grief and joy. “I should have wrote this while you were still here…even though I only had you a year and a half, you made me laugh, now it’s making me cry. Thanks for coming in my world, Sweet Abby girl.”

*

What A Relief is an album that, for as brief as it is, and for as brief as the songs are—none of them run the risk of overstaying their welcome, it is an album that, from beginning to end, is full of surprises. One of which is the dark turn it takes near the halfway point, both in sound, and in lyricism, on the stark, brittle “As Good As It Gets.”

Featuring nearly unrecognizable guest vocals from Mitski Miyawaki, I am remiss to call “As Good As It Gets” a “song about love” because of how bleakly it takes a look at the slow, painful dissolution of a relationship, but it is also not a breakup song—oscillating slowly, and icily, when something is barely being held together, and neither party is willing to be open or honest about the roles their playing.

Musically, “As Good As It Gets,” in mirroring the lyrics, simmers in a place of palpable tension that is never cut, or released during the song’s spry three-minute runtime, and the song itself wastes literally none of that time, with Gavin’s voice coming in as a quiet sneer over an angsty guitar strum.

The further along the verse goes, the more elements are subtly added, including a chintzy keyboard melody that twinkles on top, and the slight rhythmic thud of programmed percussion, giving it all a little more direction before the chorus, when live drums arrive, as well as a wash of dramatic, low synthesizers that create a visceral downcast feeling over the snap of the snare drums and, perhaps the most surprising thing of all, the groove that a song this dark does wander into, with Gavin’s voice blending with Miyawaki’s, creating something hypnotic though unsettling.

And there is something rigid but incredibly vivid, to the writing within “As Good As It Gets,” as Gavin and Miyawaki trade verses, and in doing so, fill the roles as depicted. It is also a song where, like “Keep Walking,” Gavin shows her ability to write an extremely memorable and attention-grabbing opening line. 

“Do I disappoint you?,” she asks, point blank, within a second of the song opening. “Am I not what I seemed?,” she continues. “I get disappointed too when love is not what I dreamed.”

Gavin’s verse then quickly becomes more direct, confrontational, and exasperated. “You only understand me 80% of our days. The sex can be amazing,” she confesses, and then resigns. “And otherwise, it’s okay.”

Miyawaki, then, in her verse, offers a response of sorts—her voice much more hushed, walking a line of being both fragile and confident, and seemingly coming from a different range, or a different timbre, than I am used to hearing from her.

“I want you to disappoint me,” she says, boldly. “On and on until we’re old. I’m inside folding laundry,” she continues, painting a tense, yet mundane portrait of the characters within this narrative. “You’re outside fixing the hose.”

The disconnect between the two people involved is similar to what Gavin writes about in “Sketches,” but while in “Sketches,” there is a sadness over how things have turned out, here, it is less sad, and more harrowing, as both Gavin and Miyawaki, in the chorus, repeat the titular phrase, in an effort to convince themselves of something they are very uncertain of. “I think this is as good as it gets, my love,” they sing. “Pray to god that you think that it is enough. I think this is as good as it gets.”

The song doesn’t end abruptly, but it does end quickly—for all its restraint, there is a propulsion forward all the way up until the final moment, and the final utterance of the expression “As Good As It Gets,” though, like a number of the other more introspective or serious in nature songs on What A Relief, there is no resolution to be found, and we are left with the imagery of two people on the edge of something, neither of them willing to take the next step.

*

Written apparently, on the same day as Muna’s breakout song, “Silk Chiffon,” the first single from What A Relief, issued the same day the album was announced, is “Aftertaste,” which, for as much as Gavin wishes to, and is often successful in, establishing her own musical identity with this endeavor, feels the most Muna-esque, in both the way it is arranged and structured, as well as the lyrical territory she explores. 

“Aftertaste” was, of course, a smart choice as a first single, followed by “Casual Drug Use” and then “Inconsolable,” a slow rollout beginning over the summer, giving listeners relatively accurate examples of what they could anticipate from the record, as a whole, upon arrival., but out of all the dozen tunes on What A Relief, “Aftertaste,” placed second in the sequencing, is by far, like, the one written and assembled with the idea of “single” in mind—there are no inaccessible songs to be found on this record but “Aftertaste” is truly the most inviting and warm in terms of how it sounds, and how it beckons to you once it begins to build.

And for as much, and as often, as I talk about convergences, within contemporary pop music, or am looking for them, and have certainly already implied that there are convergences or collisions within this very album, there is a specific one that occurs within “Aftertaste”—the convergence of a kind of breezy pop aesthetic, with a soul, or spirit, firmly planted in folk music.

In the profile with Paste, Gavin is quoted as saying she would describe What A Relief as “Lilith Fair-core,” which makes sense, because you can hear echoes of the marquee names of female artists from the past throughout. And a song like “Aftertaste” absolutely dazzles with a kind of undeniably catchy acoustic folk-pop iridescence—something that would not have sounded out of place at all played on an adult contemporary radio station, or in heavy rotation on VH-1 in the late 1990s.

The song begins with a shimmering acoustic guitar strum, with electronic textures fluttering around, and then the eventual arrival of subtle, rhythmic skittering that comes in underneath, the closer it gets to the big payoff that occurs in the chorus—which features Gavin playing the violin, and tasteful, tumbling, brushed snare drum taps, effortlessly merging the folksier elements of the song, and Gavin’s interests as a whole, with the glossier pop leanings that she explores in Muna.

And what I realized is that the narrative of “Aftertaste” is not a continuation, really, of the glitchy, pulsating Muna song “Home By Now”—it, like “Aftertaste,” in execution, is perhaps the best example of “Sad, But Willing To Dance”—or a “spiritual sequel,” but it is an inverse, in a way, of the idea of running into a former partner, and observing how they are different, and how they are the same, and what you experience as a result. 

“Home By Now” is less regretful and more remorseful—understanding, as Gavin comes to realize near the end of What A Relief, the role she played in the dissolution of a relationship, but the song does take a moment to wonder what might have occurred if she had behaved differently. 

“Heard that you were selling your piano and your car. It feels so weird to not reach out and ask you how you are,” Gavin starts on “Home By Now.” “Wonder if you’re moving, or if money’s just that tight—these are the kinds of questions to which I’ve resigned my rights ever since I decided there were things that I needed that you couldn’t give to me.”

Here, on “Aftertaste,” there is a palpable longing that is slowly revealed and then reveled in by the time we reach the bridge, and in that longing, Gavin sings from a place of regret, rather than the remorse. 

“My hair got long—your hair got cut,” she observes. “You wear the same old sweater. It’s good to see you—we’re catching up. We’re talking about the weather.”

The longing, then, and a heavy sense of self-deprecation, is rushed in as the music swirls around Gavin. “And I’m naked when you look my way,” she explains. “You can see it on my face,” she continues, before playing her entire emotional hand. “You’re the only reason I came here—you’re the only reason I stayed here.”

“I’m living on the aftertaste—don’t you tell me it’s too late,” she pleads.

The folk-pop structure, of course, is razor sharp in just how smart it is for “Aftertaste,” and how it elevates the song to the level it is operating at. But it is the slinking, playful little melody that arrives before the song ascends—commonly what is referred to as the “pre-chorus” that truly makes this tune as fun and as memorable as it is.

“And I’m the empress in my new clothes,” she begins, somewhat seductively, perhaps unintentionally so, with her voice coasting a natural rise and fall as the music underneath builds. “And I think that you must know. And you’re taking pity on me, pretending you don’t see,” she sings, before the chorus rushes in. It’s impressive, this little moment that is created, and it is fascinating in how Gavin then plays with the narrative because by the time the second chorus arrives, the observations switch from Gavin herself, to the discovery and reversal of the other person within the world of the song. 

Quite stunning in the balance it strikes, between folk and a more bombastic kind of pop music, “Aftertaste” is one of the finest, or biggest moments on the album for sure, and is one of the more remarkably and intelligently written songs of the year. 

*

And it is not indicative of the 11 songs that follow, because What A Relief does begin with a hush, and while, yes, the album does often find itself operating from a place of quiet, or a more gentle sound, with the occasional moment where it lifts itself to dazzling heights, the stunning, evocative opening track, “I Want It All,” lyrically, is indicative of the personal places that Gavin is willing to take her songwriting. 

And I have, of course, already written about my fascination with the difference, and the potential for a convergence, between “love songs,” and songs that are about love—and what that might mean. Gavin, throughout the album, does ultimately explore both concepts, because even songs that are about a relationship that has ended, or is on the cusp, are songs about love, in a way, but I would argue that “I Want It All” is a place where those things converge. It is a “love song” in the sense that it is sensual, even lusty, really, and tender in what it depicts, but it is also a song about love because, within that tenderness, there is a kind of obsessive nature that can, and does, take someone over when they find themselves in a deep emotional and physical connection with another.

“I Want It All” begins very gently, and because it is the first track on the record, it does let the listeners know, I think, what they might be in for, in terms of the kind of arranging Gavin is going to favor. It begins, as a number of these songs inevitably do, with the tandem work of two different acoustic guitar layers, flickering their strings not against one another, but finding where the notes, and sounds, can be woven into each other, with the subtle flickering of the cello strings, atmospherically rippling underneath it. And once Gavin’s voice arrives, quietly singing the first line, you can hear the mournful drawl of a pedal steel. 

Gavin’s voice is then magnified in the chorus by a layer of background vocals, allowing it to ascend a little higher, though she never really lets her voice soar in the way that she will later on, in a few places, or the way she does in the bombast with Muna. But she doesn’t have to. And, I mean, it does create a little bit of a sense of tension, or unease, with the kind of holding pattern “I Want It All” circles—there is little variation in the music itself, and Gavin’s voice remains steady, delivering the lyrics in a way that states them plainly so the intent behind them resonates. 

The line treaded, I think, on “I Want It All,” is between a kind of romance, and a kind of intensity, both of which I would argue border on dangerous, though I think that adds to why they do resonate, and why the song, even in its subdued approach, is so powerful. 

Gavin’s words are a plea, yes, and also come as a mantra of sorts with how calmly they are delivered, with her voice just rising and falling naturally on top of the skeletal instrumentation. “I want you to film me when you’re not recording,” she begins. “I want you to see me when you’re not looking,” she continues, then delivering, without even so much as a wink, the line that stopped me in my tracks, and told me that this album, from beginning to end, was going to be something special, and compelling.

“I want you to fuck me when we’re not touching.”

This kind of insatiable need continues in the second verse. “I want you to feed me when we’re not eating. I want you to dream me when you’re not sleeping. And I want you to miss me when I’m right next to you,” she demands, before the stunning final line. “Want you to forgive me—I’m not sure for what yet.”

And there is an immediacy, or an urgency, that courses through “I Want It All,” even in how slowly paced and hushed it is, and that kind of emergent nature is made more apparent in the two lines that Gavin stretches out over the chorus. “I want it all, all the time,” she explains, before adding, and in doing so, makes things feel all the more urgent, “I’m gonna lose my mind.”

And perhaps, this far in, it is too late to introduce a new idea in writing about Katie Gavin, What A Relief, and specifically, “I Want It All,” but in sitting with this album, and in giving consideration to this song, and the way it walks the line between a romantic sentiment and an obsessive, emergent, sensual need, I thought about where this song, and others on the album, fall within the concept of “The Kingdom of Desire.”

And of course, I have used and potentially overused this expression and descriptor in the past—it, like the idea of being “Sad, But Willing to Dance,” comes from Hanif Abdurraqib, from an old essay he wrote about Carly Rae Jepsen and the songs on her album Emotion. The idea is that within the world of the song—those songs, specifically, Jepsen takes you up to a point. But she never takes you any further. There is a desire. A want. And she is always chasing after it—just a few steps behind it, barely out of her grasp. The song ends, usually, before she catches up to the object of her affection.

The songs take place within a world of longing.

The thing that is so compelling about “I Want It All,” outside of how it operates from a place of lustful tension, is how it handles the plainly stated phases. They aren’t declarations—or, at least, Gavin does not turn them into such. The song has no resolution, really, save for her confessions that she is going to “lose her mind,” but we are never certain why, exactly. There is a creeping, sensual ambiguity to it all. The want. And we as listeners are left to wonder, if she is on the edge of this desire, and this want, and has yet to experience it with the object of her affection, or, if she is reveling in it.

Regardless, of how gentle the song’s arranging is, that quiet is juxtaposed against the intensity of desire, and for as many times as Gavin has penned a song where it beckons you to lose yourself in the darkness of a dance floor for just a few moments, “I Want It All” beckons for that kind of surrender to something, but in a much more intimate and heightened way, and depicts it in an absolutely stunning way.

*

A trap that I have fallen into, over the decade-plus I have spent writing about music, and especially within the last five years ago, with how meticulous I have become in terms of analysis, is that I will often speak, perhaps a little flippantly, about the perfection, or lack thereof, of an album. 

I describe something as being “damn near perfect,” or depending where the piece is going, and how I am feeling about the record in question, will state “it isn’t a perfect album—I never said it was.” 

Upon hitting play on What A Relief for the first time, on the day of its release, I did anticipate it would be an album I would enjoy, but to the extent that I did end up enjoying it, and finding to be so thoughtful, and ultimately so moving, was a surprise. 

Making an artistic statement does not have to be bold, or declarative. I mean, it helps, or at least it gets the attention of the audience. What A Relief is a huge statement, but the ironic thing is that it is such a gentle record, the word “huge” seems like the incorrect thing to say. It is beautiful. It can be fun, or snarky. It is thought-provoking and tender. It is somber, and reflective. It gives us brief flashes of a life that, in places, can mirror our own and the reasons why we have to continue to grow and discover things about ourselves, as unflattering or as difficult as they may be. 

It gives us the reason to continue putting in “The Work” and there are places where it does ask us to surrender to something—the urge to move, in time, to the pulsating rhythm, in the darkness, and let go of everything holding us back.

It asks us, at times, to surrender to our desires, and to lose ourselves in the embrace of another with whom we are infatuated with.

For as long gestating as What A Relief allegedly was, it is an extraordinarily cohesive sounding record that explores the facets of Katie Gavin’s musical interests outside of her work with Muna while still, at times, gives us a glimpse of her connection to the group. It rarely falters, and even if it were to do so, the album is so personal, and so genuinely interesting, that it remains gorgeous and compelling. 

It isn’t even “near perfect.” But rather, it is. 

^{1- The unfortunate thing is that when I do think about Thom Yorke now, I am just disappointed in him. Some of his more troubling political beliefs I think have been well known for a while but he has doubled down on them over the last year with the genocide occurring to the people of Palestine. He, and Radiohead as a whole, have long supported Israel and have been dismissive of the unofficial boycott of performing there because of the conflicts. He most recently, as of this writing, became confrontational with a pro-Palestine protester who was at one of his concerts. Equally as troubling is his Radiohead and Smile bandmate Johnny Greenwood’s pro-genocide stance, as well as that of his spouse, who has a long history of not only those kind of beliefs but also is apparently transphobic. This is all embarrassing, really, and I have spent the last few years wondering how to, if at all, reconcile any of this with the music made by a band I at one time adored.} 

^{2- It is also worth mentioning in a recent interview, Yorke more or less told people who were hoping Radiohead would reconvene and record new music or tour that they could go fuck themselves.} 

^{3- This is just a quick aside to mention another recent instance of this, which I did eventually find a way to get over, which is the “sexy baby” line in “Anti-Hero” from Taylor Swift.} 

What A Relief is out now on Saddest Factory.