TV On The Radio's Return To Cookie Mountain just turned 20, and when I revisited it, I was struck all over again by how much Katrina Ford's backing vocals added to a bunch of those songs. Ford was a TVOTR associate from the very beginning. Before he produced the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Fever To Tell, Dave Sitek did his first-ever production job on Here Is Night, Brothers, Here The Birds Burn, the 2002 album from Ford's Baltimore art-punk band Love Life.
When you see Katrina Ford play live, her voice will blow you through the venue's back wall. If you ever caught one of the occasions that she joined TV On The Radio onstage, hoo baby! Ford was a huge presence on TVOTR's best records, and she also did great work with her own post-Love Life band Celebration and in her collaborations with people like UNKLE and Future Islands. For the past few years, Ford has been putting out solo records, and she's just announced a new one.
This fall, Katrina Ford will follow 2024's H.E.A.R.T. with her new LP To The Lighthouse, which she recorded with her partner and former Love Life/Celebration bandmate Sean Antanaitis. It's partly inspired by the '80s pop hits and movie soundtracks, and the new single "Winter Sun" is a gauzy synthpop reverie that demands to be hurt at night, in a room where silk curtains flutter in the breeze. In a press release, Ford says:
"It’s the morning after the Dark Night of the Soul, facing shadows for better days to come. In the tropics, there exists the phenomenon of a zero shadow day, where the sun is directly overhead at noon and casts no shadow. Eerily, it makes everything look like it’s floating. I dreamt of being free from the shadow — my negative self forever following. Nostalgia as a balm; music is cool then warm.
Below, check out "Winter Sun," as well as "Transcending," the single that Ford released last month, and the album's tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Culture Vulture"
02 "Winter Sun"
03 "Transcending"
04 "To The Lighthouse"
05 "Pluck"
06 "The Optimist"
07 "Killer Jane"
08 "Candle"
09 "Back To Base"
To The Lighthouse is out 10/30 on Violin Films.
