Katie Dey’s Honeyed Melancholia and Intimacy in ‘solipsisters’

Katie Dey | solipsistsers | Run For Cover Records

Release Date: May 31st, 2019

A perspective from the inside out; sculpted by individual thought, a bittersweet inner world growing in the outer. I think therefore I am – I think, therefore everything else is, too. If perception is reality, reality stems from within the conscious, the subconscious. To shape the world around us with not only what we see; what we hear, touch, the embrace of life swirling in the unconscious.

Hailing from Australia, dream-pop artist Katie Dey returns with her third album ‘solipsisters‘; a personal exploration of the self, studded with loving synths and candy-coated melancholia. Written in isolation, the expression of Dey’s poignant, and at times painful honesty reflects an inner dialogue. These dialogues within us, the narratives we create – a brick by brick construction of our very own worlds, building a conscious environment – a juxtaposition between alienation and deeply personal connections with others.

A sweeping textural glitter opens ‘solipsisting’, a caress of dreamy ambience and ghostly vocal samples; gleaming through whispers into a vibrant sprout. Pushing forth, growing, a sweetened inhale in an immersive soundscape; an exhale as a tender wave. Embracing the shore in a rising | falling clap amongst the seascape of sound and synth, a submersion of heartbeat percussion pounding within the chest. Dey’s glimmering, ethereal vocals shine in a bedroom melancholia; honeyed bad dreams dotted with acoustic guitars, keys – a rising tide. Rising higher and higher, a climatic gentleness; sprouting epic, crashing and slumbering in candy-coated immersion.

Greeted with quick-glitch percussion, ‘dissolving’ opens in an electronic splendour. Dey’s processed vocals gleaming in the lo-fi; an embrace of digital dance in an uptempo. Saccharine vocals sting emotional, a loving heart playing with timbres, exploring the self with in both self-care, tinged with a biting sadness. Dey’s ability to glide seamlessly amongst strings, keys and electronic bliss, allows a flood of emotion to shine through in her sound; Dey’s whispers and cut up vocals speaking to the listener, while still seeming like a private conversation between herself, and her inner narrative.

‘shell’ shows a chiming cymbal sweep into glowing, progressive percussion; a driving beat swimming in the seascape of Dey’s compassionate vocals, twirling playfully with synths. Dey’s use of carefully layered timbres sculpts a gentle vision of reflection, a painful beauty in the crashing of a tide, in the withdrawing sea-foam. Watching twilight ache above a tumultuous ocean, a symbiosis in painful truths and a dream-soaked existence – creating one, the other; colliding, dancing, sleeping in the cages of our lungs; springing into bulbs, blooming, dying – breathing underwater.

The engulf of Dey’s textural traverse is both comforting and tinged with a saccharine pull of the heart-strings in ‘solipsisters’. An incredibly intimate experience, not for the listener but for herself; yet we still feel so connected. How to create the warmth of paradise when we are disintegrating from the inside out, the conversations with ourselves that turn nasty. What then, of the world inside us? What then, of the world around us? ‘solipsisters’ creates a world of tenderness and intimacy, an exploration of our outside world from within ourselves.

Review by Jenna Dreisenstock