KRANKY 26th June 2026
Hazy, drifting pieces, with wheezy wind sounds, quietly plunking piano and barely-breathed vocals. Sounds reverberate and move between an infant soothing song to an internal monologue. I get the sense of somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, a half-remembered day passing behind flickering eyelids as the dawn approaches. A crepuscular dream with sparse and distant percussive tones of guitar or piano piercing through early morning ground-mist before a warm day.
Cate Kennan is a Los Angeles musician and this is her second album. Inspired by the dislocation Kennan felt upon returning to the rustic neighbourhood northwest of L.A. where she’d grown up: “Wandering through a place where my life once existed but where everything had quietly shifted with time.”
Like Eric Chenaux, sounds are frequently woozy, like a drunken pump organ or detuned guitar, creating a shifting ground for the imagery. Through a glass darkly we hear intimate piano thoughts, meditations and emotionally-tired reflections and fragments. As the album progresses we get deeper and odder, moving into the interstices of Kennan’s musings with rumbling sub-sonics.
A personal vision worth spending time with.
Ross McGibbon