Kate Bollinger, Manchester

Kate Bollinger biography

Kate Bollinger’s songs tend to linger well beyond their run times, filling the negative space of ordinary days with charming melodies and smart phrasings. She writes them at home in Richmond, Virginia, letting her subconscious lead stretches on guitar, an open-ended process she likens to dreaming. From a chord progression appears a line, maybe a syllable will start to stick, enough to pursue, but she says sometimes the words don't feel like her own, more like shapes that form in the mind’s sky. While many are personal and deal with the emotions that surface with finding her place in the world, she’d prefer they be whatever you’d like them to be, to connect with listeners in their own way. Bollinger’s musical universe is relaxed, tender, and unassuming; within lives a timeless sensibility, a songwriter’s knack for noticing the little things and their counterpoints. Darkness and light, pain and pleasure, reality and escape. With a tour underway supporting Real Estate and dates with Faye Webster slated for spring 2022, Bollinger lets the next one fly alongside the announcement of her first-ever label signing. From a forthcoming collection on Ghostly International, “Yards / Gardens” finds Bollinger in full swing, skipping verses of uncertainty above a bright and nimble bassline and kick. Guitarist Chris Lewis weaves throughout, his riffs unravel across the bridge, trailing her lines like ellipses. Written with Trainum and Lewis in their shared month-to-month storage space, “Yards / Gardens” reflects “feeling resistant to change, during a time when it felt like everything was changing,” says Bollinger. Growing up has become a motif in her work, but she’s never sidestepped the concept in quite this way. Here, self-assured and surrounded by vivid production, she leans back in the grass, letting expectations breeze by, reminding herself she’ll tend to things in good time (“I’m viewing days like practice rounds / come next year, I’ll know what to do”).

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