Katie Dey: Forever Music | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Taking a step back from the increasingly prolific output of Australian noise-pop artist Katie Dey, it’s actually kind of crazy to hear the difference between her earliest, hyper-experimental, jagged, digital storms of destroyed pop and what now, in many ways, is recognisably the sound of a singer-songwriter. Dey’s music is so integral to her being that such a change speaks to profound changes in herself. She’s made such a habit of intimately detailing her life through her artistry -moreso than most- that I suppose it’s not really surprising the latest chapter of her journey should be called Forever Music.

I suppose I should defuse that ‘singer-songwriter’ bomb, before it goes off, some people wouldn’t want to be saddled with that label and all its associated connotations. Much of what has made Dey a hero of the avant-garde and hyper-pop scenes is still here, in the DIY synth sounds and the lacerating details of life, love and medication. That said, Dey candidly admits “I think it’s the most vulnerable and straightforward music I've ever made. My voice is frequently unfiltered and dry and i tried to keep the songwriting and production as efficient and minimal as possible.” As if anticipating the painfully laboured guessing-game I usually engage in regarding her influences she’s also detailed a list that includes pretty classic singer-songwriters like Regina Spektor and Tori Amos, dyed-in-the-wool progressives like jpegmafia and those somewhere in between, like Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hatsune Miku. That combines to form an almost disconcertingly accurate picture of what you’ll get on Forever Music: a suite of classic songs, played on substantially more modern synthesiser and drum-machine, with occasional flashes of the thunderous distortion of the Katie Dey of old, as on early single, Real Love.

The lyrics are once again published on her Bandcamp page, for maximum personal honesty. Not that you’ll really need much help deciphering what she’s singing about any more, sanz most of the distortion. Bold themes of love and interpersonal connection, dysfunction and illness bleed -sometimes literally- into each other in ways that are both harrowing and celebratory. Take Real Love again, it recalls a horrendous domestic situation: “mostly i remember / screaming fighting /  constant violence / smells of alcohol / and cigarettes / when you got home / i made myself small / you made yourself big.” Yet, in the lush and large chorus Dey seems to want it all back again as she full-throatedly sings “I want love that hurts!”

Negative emotions and realities whirl across Forever Music but they’re always dancing with something elusively euphoric, a love that’s so desperately valuable. On the album’s title track Dey sings “if you ever want my heart / all you have to do is ask / and when eventually i'm gone / you can listen to this song.” It’s pretty emo, but as always with Dey, I find it a whole lot more compelling coming from her than someone else. It’s hard to actually measure it, but somehow the love, for another and the self-worth that instills, feels stronger here than before.

Forever Music is self-released, like a message to those close to her, because it’s only on Bandcamp, not on the streaming services. I’m glad she checked in: it’s incremental at this point, but with each release Katie Dey seems to grow that little bit more in strength, appear that much more solidly in the world. At times like these she lives quite strongly in my mind, even though all I really know of her, is the music.

- Chris Cobcroft.