The many fans of Katherine Abbott will be pleased to hear the latest good news from her.
It comes in multiple parts too. The first of which is that's she's working on her album and the others are that before that comes out "I'll be releasing a few songs I've written and recorded over the past 5 years or so which need to be set free like tiny birds who've been cooped up too long in files on my phone."
The first of those is out now and it's called "Diamonds".
Also featuring on second guitar is Jonathan Fletcher who produced & engineered the track.
Given all the work Katherine has been putting into the WLDFLWRS project over the last few years and the time she spends on the road, it's hardly surprising that her own career hasn't seen these tracks emerge before (though it's worth noting that virtually every one of her songs of whose genesis I'm aware, has been inspired by her travels. She seems much happier composing (and indeed existing) on the move.)
What adds to the picture of the nomad is the way how she seems to drift serendipitously with the natural flow of the rhythms she's attuned to, without any restricting plan. This shapes the nature of her creativity and also how she shares her songs: one seldom gets much warning of their arrival: I described last year's "Pure" and "Carnage" as having "guerilla releases".
Equally this (despite having a producer) affects the production culture. In her own words "sometimes you have to say to hell with perfection and bells and whistles and carefully laid plans and just release the damn songs".
Beautiful crafted & honed as Katherine Abbott songs always are, she has never flirted with the dangers of over-production: indeed the fans alluded to at the start are drawn to her by the emotional truth & accessibility she offers them on record as much as in her intense & ethereal live performances.
However while the general emotional tenor of her songs may be readily accessed, the literal meanings are always much more elusive, and that thankfully is the case with "Diamonds".
Mood setting is one of her fortes but lyrically her pathways take oblique trajectories: you recognise all the words Katherine uses and each individual word picture makes sense, but put them all together and what is she getting at?
It's all terribly allusive (the lyrics would probably stand up well as a poem) and encompass aspects of relationships, notions of rigidity and fragility, and possibly incompatibility. Maybe one person in a relationship wants marriage while the other would be bored by the conventions and longs, like Katherine for the open road? On the other hand, the notion that to "find diamonds, you've got to go under the ground" is open to so many interpretations in just my mind that I'm not confident in going for a single one in this review.
So you can reflect on the meaning, you can enjoy the poetry of the words or you could simply enjoy what is possibly musically the most gorgeous Katherine Abbott single with its lush guitar play & her playful, almost poppy vocal. It actually sounds a lot of fun (you can certainly tap your foot to it: I speak from experience) though that might not fully reflect the lyrics. Certainly I feel it has the potential to attract a broader audience than much of her earlier work: which may or may not be what she wants I suppose.
From what Katherine tells us, "Diamonds" may not have necessarily seen the light of day, but I'm glad she's freed it from her phone as it's utterly delightful.
