Katie Gavin is best known as the lead singer and songwriter for the band MUNA, but she’s seeking to define herself with her new solo album “What a Relief.” The album, which debuted on Oct. 25, is an introspective and deeply personal work that attends to modern life’s grief, disappointment and beauty.
While MUNA’s work frequently features pop melodies with an upbeat vibe, Gavin’s new solo record takes on a more folksy, singer-songwriter tone. Gavin described the need to create a solo album with songs written over the years that did not fit into MUNA’s artistic world on MUNA’s podcast, saying, “the solo record has been something that has been growing for a long time, and I kind of think of it like I was collecting stuff maybe unconsciously.”
“What a Relief” begins with a delicate guitar track titled “I Want It All.” Soft guitar and quiet, yearning vocals meld to open the album with stunning simplicity and lyricism, underscoring a vulnerability that continues throughout the album. Gavin gives the listener insight into love’s complexities, singing, “I want you to feed me when we’re not eating / I want you to dream me when you’re not sleeping.”. She wants an all-consuming love, culminating in the defining line from the chorus: “I want it all, all the time.” Gavin points out the innate hunger and deep desire for love that can veer toward selfishness. She does so with deep empathy for herself, as evidenced by her delicate, longing vocals that lend a softness to her desire, rather than self-criticism.
“I Want it All” seems to be in direct conversation with a track from later in the album, titled “As Good As It Gets.” Both Katie Gavin and Mitski partake in a conversation as two lovers who sing: “Pray to God that you think that it is enough / I think this is as good as it gets.” The theme of imperfect love appears again in this song, with both singers acknowledging that their relationship is not ideal but deeply necessary and beautiful. Another striking line is when Mitski sings “I want you to disappoint me / on and on until we’re old.” Gavin presents an image of romantic love that is perhaps not as hopeful as one might like. However, the song is resolute in depicting love as anxiety-inducing and selfish — and sometimes disappointing — but still beautiful and tender.
The tenderness carries through the less understated tracks on the album. Tracks like “Sanitized,” “Casual Drug Use” and “Aftertaste” present upbeat counterparts that create balance across the album. “Casual Drug Use” uses a strong driving beat to reflect some of the song’s themes about falling back into old habits. When the chorus picks up with the line “It’s a little unnerving how fast I fall back in / to fixing my issues with casual drug use,” the listener feels that compulsion in the way the song draws us into the chorus.
“Sanitized” particularly stands out because of the distinctive lyrical composition that feels slightly tongue-in-cheek. For example, Katie Gavin coughs in between the first chorus and the second verse and says a quiet “whoops” after singing “I’ve thrown out our baby in the bathtub water / There goes our daughter.” Even the song’s end fits perfectly with its back-and-forth dysrhythmic jabs between the piano and the guitar, which fight against the constrained nature of the singer’s “sanitized” world.
It would be impossible to talk about this album without mentioning the sophistication of the songwriting. It shines on every track, particularly on songs like “Sweet Abby Girl” or “Sketches,” which provide the audience with such beautiful imagery. In “Sweet Abby Girl” Gavin describes how “There’s sleep in the pink of her eyelids / absent-minded I reach to tend to it.” The intimacy and truth of this description underscores the grief described in the song, which is about losing a pet. In “Sketches,” the harmonizing vocals and sweeping melody make a line like “Some of us can make a sketch of love to fall in / And I did” hit the listener with the force of a tidal wave.
When viewing “What a Relief” as a whole, what stands out most beyond the introspective themes is how much of the album seems to converse with itself. It converses between songs as we see by pairing tracks like “I Want it All” and “As Good As It Gets” or “Sparrow” and “Today.” But it also converses within songs by describing pairs, like in “The Baton,” where a mother and daughter are featured. Similarly, “As Good As it Gets” depicts two lovers.
In the final track of the album, “Today,” we get a recurrence of the sparrow image from “Sparrow” when Katie Gavin sings “And the sparrow, she calls me / Oh, she calls me by name.” In this last track, which feels so confessional with its stripped-down production and ambient train noises, Gavin leaves us with a hopeful meditation: As imperfect as we are, the sparrow, a thing of beauty and song, calls to us and gives us meaning.
Katie Gavin’s debut album is a stunning work packed with a variety of poignant imagery and sonic wonder that showcases her songwriting might. “What A Relief” is an album that acknowledges and explores the anxieties and insecurities of daily life while finding ways to pacify them. This record is like a hug to the listener, a recognition of life’s challenges and an invitation to partake in its beauty.
