Katie Gately
Color
★★½
A dizzying and ultra lush soundscape that mixes avant electronic and modern pop. Katie Gately seems a bit different from the type of electronic-based avant pop of the current day such as Björk and Grimes. While those musicians bend the whole idea of pop music to their will, Gately more or less tries to fit in every nook and cranny pop music has to offer. I'm fairly certain I prefer artists of the former style.
The pinnacle of maximalism in modern music actually, with so many condensed layers that it becomes very numbing to listen to on certain songs. It's very catchy, and I think that's one of the things it really has going for it. The vocal layers don't really cut into that area but when they do, the choruses become so overwhelming that the whole song becomes a sort of mushy substance that doesn't seem to have any form.
With all of these layers and added confusion the idea of maintaining a catchy hook becomes a fruitless endeavor. This results in a final release that is really quite forgettable to me. I think I can actually only somewhat remember what two of the songs on these even sound like. And one of them is the single, "Tuck". This sounds straight out of the Lady Gaga playbook, both vocally and in song structure. If Gaga had maintained perhaps a noisier production and stayed a bit childish with her singing.
The other song I remember is "Color" and that's mostly thanks to the length of it. At nine minutes long it's one of the longer pop songs I've listened to, but it's probably the most worthwhile out of the really mediocre bunch here. The instrumentation is varied and the layering is minimal, yet still present. The froggy vocals near the end are pretty funny too.
Favorite Song: Color
The pinnacle of maximalism in modern music actually, with so many condensed layers that it becomes very numbing to listen to on certain songs. It's very catchy, and I think that's one of the things it really has going for it. The vocal layers don't really cut into that area but when they do, the choruses become so overwhelming that the whole song becomes a sort of mushy substance that doesn't seem to have any form.
With all of these layers and added confusion the idea of maintaining a catchy hook becomes a fruitless endeavor. This results in a final release that is really quite forgettable to me. I think I can actually only somewhat remember what two of the songs on these even sound like. And one of them is the single, "Tuck". This sounds straight out of the Lady Gaga playbook, both vocally and in song structure. If Gaga had maintained perhaps a noisier production and stayed a bit childish with her singing.
The other song I remember is "Color" and that's mostly thanks to the length of it. At nine minutes long it's one of the longer pop songs I've listened to, but it's probably the most worthwhile out of the really mediocre bunch here. The instrumentation is varied and the layering is minimal, yet still present. The froggy vocals near the end are pretty funny too.
Favorite Song: Color
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