Kate Bollinger returns with "You At Home," written and recorded in collaboration with Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors. It's the latest in a string of standalone singles following her 2022 Ghostly debut, Look at it in the Light, lauded by the likes of NPR and The Fader. Now based in Los Angeles, the Virginia-born songwriter has split time between recording new material, contributing to friend's projects (Drugdealer, Paul Cherry), and touring (with Faye Webster, Tennis, and others). She and her band continue through the US this fall and join Liz Phair’s 30th-anniversary Guyville tour in November and December.
In "You At Home," her folk-pop style merges with the signature sound of an artist she's long admired. They made the recording with an up-close, at-home, collage-like feel, capturing natural sounds, like house keys and clogs walking on steps. The song comes with a music video directed by Nikki Milan Houston and shot on 16mm; a 1940s-style surrealist collage of vignettes. Surrounded by vaguely religious imagery, Bollinger dances between black and white and saturated color, through a haunting and bewildering fever dream with the whimsy and absurdity of films like Daisies (Věra Chytilová).
“Dave and I wrote this song together during one of my first visits to LA. I've loved his band Dirty Projectors for a long time, so it was kind of a dream to play music with him. We wrote and recorded it simultaneously the day we got together and added some extra things almost exactly a year later: more guitars, house-keys percussion, my clogs walking down the steps.”
Alvvays has always been great, but with this album they took it to the next level. Every one of these songs is lodged in my brain now, permanently (in a good way). s. moxley