Cate Kennan
Shadows
kranky
In a world drunk on retro-fetishization, it’s easy to get tired of throwback approaches to music production, but there’s also a seductive alchemy that can occur when DIY hauntology collides with introspective songwriting. For Cate Kennan, the grainy, tape-esque sound of her debut album Shadows is an essential facet of the listening experience, one that matches her fragile, twilight vocals and winsome, subtly spooky melodies. Flickering like an unearthed Super 8 reel, the LP is an addictive, alluring portal that Kennan artfully opens up and pulls you through.
Uncanny familiarity is a fundamental part of Shadows. There are whispers of Magpahi’s 1970s-tinged folk mysticism on “The Lone West,” Ghost Box Records’ synth melancholia on “Moonlight” and Julee Cruise’s ethereal Lynchian balladry on “Devil’s Hour.” These are subtle echoes rather than rote comparisons, and Kennan has more than enough to express in her own elegant way. Crucially, there’s no reliance on one set of tools as she drifts between plaintive guitar, layered compositions, instrumental mood pieces and verse-chorus-verse songs.
True to its name, “Romantic Strings” bottles a little swooning orchestration into a fuzzy loop that can’t help but feel coded with The Caretaker’s unsettling slant on bygone romanticism, while laconic threads of slide guitar add their own sentimental wooze to proceedings. But it’s “Rain” that especially stands out, as the ferric degradation that dominates the album gives way to a more polished pairing of electric piano and ambient synth. Such diversions are critical to what makes Shadows so successful, proving that rather than simply relying on vintage charm, the music is actually grounded in accomplished composition.
Kennan has made an album dealing in memory and the passage of time, with the heavily coded framing of her rustic Californian hometown as a backdrop. It’s a world we can tacitly envision, and Kennan draws us deeply into it with the gentlest of leads.
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