“I need the fireworks/I need the chemistry,” Katie Gavin introduced on MUNA’s “What I Need,” “That’s what I need/There’s nothing flawed/With what I need.” The monitor thrums with unapologetic hedonism, positioning Gavin’s starvation—for pictures and medicines, to “dance in the midst of a homosexual bar,” for a cute stranger’s consideration—as righteous. Examine that, then, to “I Need It All,” the opening monitor of Gavin’s new document, What a Aid. Whereas its title would possibly sound equally desirous, the music carves a subtler, gentler path: Over gently finger-picked guitar, Gavin yearns softly for grace and compassion in a relationship, for a lover who guarantees to “forgive me/I’m undecided for what but.”
This shift in tone characterizes What a Aid, Gavin’s debut as a solo artist. The document isn’t a full departure from MUNA—Gavin has promised that this doesn’t sign a breakup for the trio—however as an alternative includes songs that Gavin wrote over a sequence of years and offered to her bandmates, who determined they didn’t fairly match into MUNA’s sound. “MUNA has develop into so bold, so the songs need to be scalable to a sure measurement,” Gavin has stated. The songs on What a Aid, then, characterize Gavin’s songwriting scaled down, changing the band’s festival-sized choruses with down-to-earth lyrics and folksy manufacturing touches. Whereas it doesn’t attain the hovering highs of Gavin’s work with MUNA, What a Aid provides introspective self-portraits whose sound calls again to Gavin’s youth and tales wealthy with the type of empathy that’s solely gained over time.
Gavin drew inspiration for What a Aid from a sound she calls “Lilith Truthful-core,” and there are echoes of girls singer-songwriters of the late ’90s and early ’00s all through the document: her lilting voice on “Aftertaste” echoes Alanis Morissette; the slinky swagger of “Sanitized” conjures Fiona Apple or Tori Amos; the mandolin and fiddle on “Inconsolable,” performed by Sean and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, calls again to the Chicks. The album’s not completely a throwback; Gavin has a particular voice, and her songs are grounded within the current. However the DNA of her childhood favorites are evident in her songcraft, like seeing an image of your mother when she was your age and realizing how related you look.
