Katie Gately – “Waltz”
Next month, Katie Gately is releasing her sophomore album, Loom, the follow-up to her 2016 debut Color. We’ve heard one track, “Bracer,” so far, and today the Los Angeles-based musician is sharing another song from it, “Waltz.”
It’s a haunting, gothically-inclined track full of synth stabs and unnerving laughs that opens with the evocative lines: “When you see me, I am already gone/ When you see meat, I’ve all but turned to stone.” Gately was inspired by listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Take This Waltz” on a loop during the last weeks of her mother’s life.
“When I listen, I see images that correlate to a zebra on a bad LSD trip,” Gately said in a statement. “But I feel that its absurdity honors the chaos of losing someone you love more than time, space or measure. And so perhaps my message is: it’s okay to feel like a drunk zebra when your heart is breaking. Or… to quote the far greater poet Leonard Cohen: ‘When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That’s about all you can do.”
Watch a video for the track directed by Samantha Shay below.
Loom is out 2/14 via Houndstooth.