“At once dreamy and punchy, shifting from bendy elastic guitar and peppy percussion to a soaring, shimmering chorus.” That’s how we described ‘Jetsam’, the introductory single to Rosie, the upcoming album from Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Kaycie Satterfield, which releases this summer on Earth Libraries. A song Satterfield devoted to the messy girls which, as we continued “shifts from attitude to sweetness and back again, refusing to settle into any tidy box.”
The sentiment is a pertinent one on a record which sets out to explore large themes through a personal lens. This is especially true as Kaycie Satterfield is so careful to move beyond the reductive surface of the ideas she chews on. Just take a look at the artist statement which accompanies the record:
Rosie is a dog. Rosie is my dog. Rosie is an album. Rosie is a celebration of the passage of time. Being queer is Salvador Dali’s melting timepiece. Being queer is quantum physics, not being able to measure a particle’s speed and location at the same time. Being queer is an internal power struggle. It’s violence, and it’s passion.
With its blend of towering shimmer and languid grooves, single ‘Video Girl’ is an introduction to the albums exploration of queer experience. True to form, the track’s romance is cut with something more complicated. Call it envy, perhaps regret, or else the needling suspicion the brightness of this person you long for will only ever illuminate your own shortcomings.
We learned all the dances on MTV
The steps never came to me naturally
But youYou knew what to do
You could dance you could move like aVideo girl
Following that, latest single ‘TV’ plays like the late-night longing which stems from such convictions, an eighties-flavoured left-field pop song charged with desire and bathed in the blue light of the screen. “Nothing but the TV on / I’m scrolling through the infomercials / Anything to keep my mind from spinning round and round in circles,” as Satterfield sings. “I’ll be your televangelist / I’ll give you all the answers / Be your Seinfeld, your friends / I’ll keep running forever.” It’s shadowy and danceable and strange, the synths at times machine like and others weirdly elastic, snapping and squishing around the soar of Satterfield’s smooth vocals.
