Saturday, June 01, 2024

KATE BOLLINGER Announces Debut Album 'Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind'

Virginia-born, LA-based multidisciplinary artist Kate Bollinger announces her long awaited kaleidoscopic debut album 'Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind', due September 27th on Ghostly International.

Inspired by pop, rock, and folk songs of the 1960s, Bollinger and her band — including collaborators Jacob Grissom, Adam Brisbin, Matthew E. White, and Sam Evian — favour the eclectic, melodic, and majestic, supporting intimate, stream-of-consciousness lyricism with classic instrumentation. It's a collection of pop songs, polished yet scrappy with an underlying punk spirit, navigating life, relationships, and growing up. Casting a collage-like vision that’s instantly memorable and uniquely mystifying, 'Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind' can feel like flipping through your coolest friend’s record collection, finding a new favourite song with each discovery.

Armed with endless hooks and wildly shifting textures, Bollinger can seem as much like a songwriter as an art-house auteur, crafting the soundtrack and scenery for a non-existent movie. Bollinger studied film in college, and recently directed the striking music video for Jessica Pratt’s single ‘World on a String’. Fittingly Bollinger conceived the video for 'Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind’s lead single, ‘Any Day Now,’ with director Ambar Navarro. Both the song and video find Bollinger redefining and refining her craft with intention. 

"My good friend Matt [E. White] was visiting from Virginia and we got together to play some music. We wrote this song and then drove around Los Angeles together. That same day he helped me realize the kind of record I wanted to make, which I subconsciously knew but couldn't really find the words for until then,” Bollinger explains. “A few months later, I recorded the song at Sam's [Evian] place in upstate New York with a band we put together. We spent the first day practicing the songs. The next day we recorded the first two songs, ‘Any Day’ Now being the second one. We did it all live in the room, no headphones or click, done in the spirit of most of my favorite music from the late 60s."

Written during a period of transience and change, 'Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind' was made to resemble a mixtape—something carefully crafted and delivered from just one person to another. In sharing this music with listeners, Bollinger took inspiration from her own formative encounters with art: quietly worshiping the early musical projects of her older brothers, attending local shows in Charlottesville and feeling empowered to write songs of her own, inheriting burned CDs from older classmates and finding a portal to another world. (Working with her friends Emma Collins and Evangeline Neuhart on the visual accompaniment, Bollinger assures the entire project feels equally communal and intuitive.) Sublimating a lifetime’s worth of musical connections into a concise 11 songs, 'Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind' captures a rare sense of purpose and ambition for a debut record, managing to feel cosily familiar while still packed full of surprises. And in her gently playful and emotionally resonant performances, Bollinger sounds as enraptured by the mystery as anyone.


Image: Juliana and Nicola Giraffe

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