Up-and-coming indie rocker Katy Kirby is trying to decode the best way to go through life as a young adult. The most useful tool to do so is self-reflection, and she’s got plenty of it on her latest single, “Cool Dry Place”, which you can stream below.
The song comes from Kirby’s upcoming debut album, Cool Dry Place, due out February 19th via Keeled Scales/Secretly. What starts off as a stripped-down, whisper-sung melody builds into a sweeping folk-rock ballad on “Cool Dark Place”. Kirby sings about her restlessness in a relationship with comforting vocal tones, but come the end, she inverts that subtle shiftiness with a gut-busting, deconstructed guitar solo that recalls Big Thief and early (Sandy) Alex G.
In a statement, Kirby elaborated on the ways in which “Cool Dry Place” is a musical self-check of sorts. As it turns out, the only thing more important than protecting yourself is making room for yourself to be vulnerable in the first place.
“I had a very fun habit of getting involved with someone and then getting cagey once they needed or just wanted me more than I was comfortable with,” she said. “I thought this was very intelligent of me, being smart enough to know when to get out, before I got close enough to lose objectivity. I suppose it isn’t a terrible rule of thumb, considering that people are statistically dangerous. But this song was me beginning to see my own needs, in an embarrassingly transparent way. I, too, am nothing more than a meatbag of vulnerabilities.”
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Kirby’s got plenty more up her sleeve before Cool Dark Place drops next year. Until then, revisit the album’s massive lead single, “Traffic!”, and its accompanying music video.
