REVIEW: Emily Yacina's "Katie" EP Confronts The Complex Questions of the Human Condition
emily yacina
"katie"
Released February 10th on Bandcamp.
A little over a month ago, prolific bandcamp musician, Emily Yacina, released a three song collection entitled Katie. Short and bittersweet, Katie is seemingly simple yet laced with the complex questions of the human condition. The album art, a magic 8-ball icosahedron with "K A T I E" written on it, evokes the finding of an answer in the album's namesake.
On the first track, "Good graces," Yacina's voice mostly stays within the higher end of her register, accompanied by soft guitar strums and lilting synth harmonies. As the song goes on, the flow of energy builds and releases: a sonic representation of emotional tide lines.
"I come clean I want you on my team/ even if you’re miles ahead.” Her words describe the sensation of longing in the face of separation. Whether that separation is emotional or physical, Yacina's meditation can be applied to fit any experience.
"Where are all the certainties I knew?" she asks, of no one in particular. Her question setting the tone of the mini-album, with the theme reaching beyond feelings for a person into a more existential longing.
Either by way of serendipitous circumstance or clever circumspection, the second track, "So easy," clocks in at 1 minute and 23 seconds.
The song depicts the experience of falling in a love so effortlessly perfect that she is filled with questions of how it could be. "You hold my heart still/ how'd you find me here?" An instrumental passage fills the stillness before Yacina's voice returns to say "wipe the sugar off/ my mouth with your hand/ here I fall for you."
On the nominal track, "Katie," she sings about the fortitude of her emotions and desire for an omniscient view of the world around her. It’s a concept she's sung about before, in "As We Go" off her 2011 release, Reverie.
The final track brings back a focus on the past and present. She notices "a penny from 2010 is buried in the dirt." The reflective morbidity of the line is almost buried within the song itself, which is lighter at first listen.
"But I'm in the sky instead." Floating among the clouds, Yacina is grappling to maintain footing, using Katie as a means for grounding her.
Alternating between the strumming of muddy chords and arpeggiated picking, the tonal rise and fall are especially poignant. A shift during the last verse from ascending to descending notes reflects the return to reality in another's arms.
Katie is a well-thought-out body of work that exemplifies Yacina’s willingness to delve deeper. It’s available on Spotify and bandcamp, as a pay-what-you-can album. While you’re at it, spend some time with her other releases — you won’t regret it.
Keep up with Emily Yacina on Bandcamp, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.