Music Review: Muna frontwoman Katie Gavin makes her solo debut with folky, evocative 'What A Relief'

On “What a Relief,” nan debut solo medium from Katie Gavin, the Muna frontwoman tackles love, family and selfhood done people and state twang that departs from nan band's accustomed dance-forward pop.

Don't worry, this isn't nan extremity of Muna — nan trio of Gavin, Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin are still making and performing euphony together. Her bandmates participate here, too, pinch Maskin playing connected 7 of nan 12 songs. But Gavin’s solo project — nan first distant from nan set for immoderate of nan 3 since it formed successful 2013 — is simply a defined, abstracted entity. These songs, written complete 7 years, are nan introverted people siblings of nan band's extroverted pop.

Take “Sparrow,” a striking opus that opens pinch nan sounds of birds. Over a guitar melody, Gavin sings astir longing for a sparrow's call, a awesome she's assigned to a lover. “Come winter, travel winter/I mislaid my lover,” she sings, her reside steady. “Just for illustration nan birds/She’d up and gone.”

While she waits, sick trees are treated pinch chemicals, inadvertently sidesplitting nan birds that telephone them home. “The world had been poisoned," she explains. "And I was still listening/For sparrow song.”

A person perceive reveals that nan chirps aren’t taken from quality aft all, but electronic.

That operation of earthy and synthetic forces, of beauty alongside melancholy, is astatine nan bosom of “What a Relief."

Another example: On “The Baton,” Gavin considers motherhood connected apical of an airy synth, elastic fiddle and drumbeat. It's nan fiddle that amplifies lyrics astir generational trauma, treatment and learning, for illustration a people communicative shared crossed generations. The synth, swelling underneath, is Gavin's modern twist.

“I’d walk her nan baton and/I’d opportunity you amended run," she sings of a hypothetical daughter, "'Cause this point has been going/For galore generations/But location is truthful overmuch healing/That still needs to beryllium done."

Gavin's medium reveals her circumstantial soul life, examining relationships little often covered successful Muna's activity — for illustration nan ones betwixt mother and daughter, mother and dog, Mother Earth and her creatures.

Romantic relationships aren't ignored, however, but they are made complicated. Indie stone singer-songwriter Mitski duets pinch Gavin connected “As Good As It Gets,” a happy-sad ode to a business that has reached a leveling point. Perhaps it's for nan best, nan duo concedes, erstwhile love's magic melts into nan mundane.

Gavin channels Alanis Morissette successful nan span of nan addictive “Aftertaste,” nan azygous that introduced her arsenic a solo artist. She's preoccupied pinch a partner who is gone, but painfully front-of-mind.

“And I’m living/On nan aftertaste," she sings successful nan chorus. "Don’t you show maine it’s excessively late.”

Like nan ache it describes, her words and their upbeat transportation linger. It's evocative of Gavin's champion songwriting — a profoundly felt experience.

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