Katy J Pearson at New Century
Johnny James, Managing Editor
Armed with a new album of glistening indie pop, Katy J Pearson performs at New Century on 2 December.
Loved for her blend of soaring, widescreen melodies and warm, intimate storytelling, Katy J Pearson leapt from Bristolian newcomer to breakthrough star with 2020’s Return – a debut record powered by an unforgettable voice and pop smarts to match. 2022’s fantastic follow-up Sound of the Morning took things in a more experimental direction, courtesy of producer and Speedy Wunderground head honcho Dan Carey.
Now, Pearson returns with a record that feels more her own:
“I knew exactly who I wanted to work with, I knew exactly who my session band were going to be, I knew where I wanted to record. It felt like I was finally calling the shots for myself, and that was so empowering.”
With Bullion AKA Nathan Jenkins now behind the desk, Someday Now was laid down over a couple of weeks at Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, with a band composed of Heavenly label-mates Huw Evans and Davey Newington, along with fellow Broadside Hacks collaborator Joel Burton.
“May the wind be always at your back” chants Katy J Pearson over the opening seconds of the record. Lifted from an age-old Celtic blessing, the words sound disjoined, glitchy; something ancient recast for the modern age. And that’s what this album feels like more generally, with timeless songwriting wrapped in contemporary productions that find Pearson refusing to kick her heels, running red lights, resisting retrogrades, and exercising her own autonomy – in life, in love, and in the recording studio.
A wide and interesting palate of inspirations inform the record: Beck, Neneh Cherry, Charlotte Gainsbourg; Kate Bush, Tears For Fears, Arthur Russell. ‘Long Range Driver’, which cuts fuzzy country guitar with sax is “kinda Sheryl Crow vibes…that very traditional Americana fiddle with the compressed modern saxophone sounds is such an amalgamation of my tastes”. Album opener ‘Those Goodbyes’ is a fully realised pop hit, replete with glitches, big choruses and sparkly synths, before the bouncy, breezy ‘Save Me’ takes us somewhere more ruminative, though packed with no less earworm hooks.
On this tune and all across the album, there’s a lot of lyrical vulnerability, Pearson’s focus turning inwards. “You open me up / see I’m not so tough” she sings on the aforementioned ‘Save Me’, with echoey Arthur Russell-esque, and later full-on disco, strings. On the lilting ballad ‘It’s Mine Now’, she takes a leap of faith and firm ownership of disaster: “Modern catastrophe / it’s mine now / this tragedy’s mine now”. On the transcendent ‘Maybe’, she is “vulnerable to love and life…maybe I don’t need your love / to show me I’m good enough”. It all feels like Katy J Pearson in her truest, most natural state, unafraid of emotional honesty.
Conceived by Pearson and shot on wet plate collodion by Kasia Wozniak, Someday, Now’s cover captures its artist armed with a heavy sword – a fitting, cherry-on-top visual metaphor for a woman who has “always been shy of taking up space” well and truly finding her power. Katy J Pearson’s third record, she says, “is my best work so far, and I’m not afraid to say that.” As she puts it on album closer ‘Sky’, “Not on my knees / Look how I go / I’m an eagle / I am the sky”. That yearned-for, dreamed-of someday is, it seems, happening right now.
