Katie Gavin

Music often casts love as a game of absolutes: Heartbreak is the end of the world, and evil exes are obstacles to be overcome, rather than people to look directly in the eye. Life’s not really like that, though, and it’s rare that a songwriter truly tries to sift through the gray areas of quotidian romance in search of meaning. On her debut solo album What A Relief, Katie Gavin does just that: absorbing influences from over the course of her life and filtering them through the generational songwriting ability she’s honed as part of MUNA, What A Relief scrutinizes our collective need for intimacy and romance without judgment or harshness. Described, accurately, by Gavin as “Lilith Fair-core,” What A Relief taps into the unguarded self-possession and homespun pop sensibility of singers like Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco, and uses their tenacity as a north star for Gavin’s own trek towards self-discovery. “This record spans a lot of my life – it’s about having a really deep desire for connection, but also encountering all the obstacles that stood in my way to be able to achieve that, patterns of isolation or even boredom with the real work of love” she says. “What A Relief explores and portrays it honestly, without shame.”

Written over the course of seven years, What A Relief comprises a set of songs that Gavin always loved but which “had something in them” that she and her bandmates felt didn’t quite fit within the universe they were trying to cultivate with MUNA. Many of them were written on acoustic guitar, the way Gavin first learned to write songs, and are rooted in “a style of music that’s very much in my blood, and natural for me,” as typified by the Canadian Women & Songs CDs that Gavin loves, which compiled music by artists like Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan. A solo album wasn’t always in the offing for Gavin; it wasn’t until she started texting songs to friends – “If we were talking about some issue and I’d be like, ‘I actually just wrote a song about that” – that she figured she might have enough material for a solo record. Her friend Eric Radloff, who plays on What A Relief, further encouraged Gavin to make an album, and when MUNA signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ label Saddest Factory, Bridgers introduced Gavin to her longtime producer Tony Berg (Aimee Mann, Edie Brickell) and said she wanted to release whatever came of their sessions together. The resulting songs are stark, truthful and generous, drawing on experiences that are often felt but hard to put into words. On What A Relief, as on her work with MUNA, Gavin proves herself as one of her generation’s most deft songwriters, able to articulate discomfiting feelings with grace and pragmatism.