Those that know me well, are likely aware that my latest hobby has been cultivating my guitar playing and songwriting skills. I am an absolute wannabe, and I want to be a strong, insightful songwriter like the ones I love and appreciate so much. Let's add Katie Herzig to that list.
I cut my teeth on Katie's latest album The Waking Sleep which infuses her heartfelt songwriting techniques with experimentation in digital music.
Favorite Tracks
"Free my Mind" The song comes alive with a steady opening beat that pulses immovably as Katie weaves lyrics around electronic additions: typewriter sounds, simulated marimba, keyboard effects, egg shakers, high hats and various ticks and clicks. By the midpoint of the song it has fully developed and climaxes in a jubilant bridge that resounds the words "Never had my mind made up, until the bomb dropped." The strings and percussion bounce under the lyrics urging you to sing along. As the song plays out the percussion pares down little by little and synth strings stretch out underneath allowing a buoyant ostinato to take center stage.
"Way to the Future" The way to the future is "Orchestral Pop." Katie proves this easily by her application of the genre in this song. It is delightful to hear a string quartet employed in both a percussive and harmonic way in this driven, uplifting track. Here again we see electronic music utilized in conjunction with more traditional instrumentation. The effect is a soundscape in which the individual instruments blend together so seamlessly that the create one "wall of sound." The voice is heavily filtered and doubled making it become a part of the broader musical texture.
More from this Artist
After enjoying The Waking Sleep I couldn't help but explore Katie's other music. Listens to earlier albums like Apple Tree and Weightless reveal that her artistry is rooted in a folksy, guitar centric sound that is in compliment her intuitive lyrical ability. By this comparison The Waking Sleep reveal a fairly dramatic shift in her sound. Digging deeper I discovered that the change can be attributed to a shift in her career, as she wrote the album after a significant stint writing music for TV and film (including Gray's Anatomy, Drop Dead Diva and Sex and the City 2. The assignments forced her to add structure and breadth her writing. The album has stronger more lyrical melodies as well as more developed accompaniments and musical textures. It is a natural progression given that most new artists lack the resources to produce albums with full accompaniments or a full host of experienced collaborators. The Waking Sleep is a culmination of Katie's growth artistically as well as her career successes which have allowed her to produce an album with more bits and pieces.
Though I touted the benefits of vinyl in my last blog, there is an immeasurable benefit to the technological leaps that have been made recently through Internet engines like Pandora and Spotify. Spotify played a key role in my discovery of Katie Herzig. The feature of note is the sites ability to suggest a list of artists that you "might like" based on their similarity to artists you have played. This has been a superlative way for me to discover artists that are new to me (like Katie) and are exactly my taste. I've loved taking suggestions from friends and picking albums at random, and I will certainly continue to do so, but this week I needed to find something that was going to satisfy what I've been craving. Katie Herzig satisfied my hunger for intuitive identifiable lyrics, and bright melodies with which I can sing along.
