Gothic Theatre
Katie Chastain
Flannery O’Connor once commented on the tricky business of communicating to those whose point of view differs from your own. Since the “normal means of talking” usually won’t cut it, her advice is ”. . . to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.”
There are a lot of shockers and shouters making music, but Katie Chastain isn’t one of them. From her first sighing note, Ms. Chastain tests the waters of the small and quiet. She invites the listener to lean in close, to squint and wait—almost ear to mouth—as she sings.
Katie Chastain writes in snapshots and close-ups, revealing an image, moment or emotion in urgent detail—”Drunk kaleidoscope of pink/Breathless at the bathroom sink”—This is not poetry so much as abstract art. She pauses in the spaces, exposing hangnail and kiss, hesitation and flush. And the sounds of her ensemble wear her words well. Ms. Chastain’s sweet, almost broken-down voice whispers through a convincing and active musical darkness where the soundscape is simultaneously alien and melodic, beat-driven and lyrical. She doesn’t sit back in the groove so much as let it pull her along. Found sounds alternately lilt and advance amid guitar, accordion or piano and her unhurried voice flowers from the middle of it all. There is nothing sentimental or romantic in these songs, only the repeating raw attempt of Ms. Chastain’s sensual, symphonic journalism proving that making one’s vision apparent can be small and hushed, so long as the vision and the invitation are real—and worth listening to.
A native of Indiana, Ms. Chastain is an accidental artist. Until a few years ago, the extent of her musical experience could be located between the pages of her childhood church’s hymnal. She was nineteen before she even picked up a guitar or wrote a song. Now a resident Bostonian, Katie Chastain is in the middle of playing her heart out and recording her first, full-length album.
