Kate Davis "Monster Mash"
About The Artist
As badly as we want our trajectory to be linear and to make logical sense, sometimes life has other plans for us. We have to listen to that little voice within, whispering: rebel against the status quo. This has been the experience of singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Kate Davis, where she hits the brakes on the life she thought she knew, grabbed the creative reins and rebuilt her artistic foundation. As she triumphantly walks away from her previous life as a conservatory-trained jazz musician and into her future as an experimental art-rock singer, Davis has found a new home within herself. This coming-of-age story is at the heart of Davis’ sophomore album, ‘Fish Bowl,’ coming soon via her new label home of ANTI- Records.
That urge to rebuild started small. Growing up in Portland where she began playing violin at age five and bass at age thirteen, Davis later moved to New York City to attend the Manhattan School Of Music. At night, Davis would sneak down to Brooklyn, where she watched indie-rock innovators Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors and secretly dreamed of breaking away from the academic rigor of the jazz world she inhabited. In 2014 she was asked by the group Postmodern Jukebox to record a cover of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” which accidentally went viral on YouTube. As a lifelong musician, Davis felt constrained by the limitations of one viral moment. But with time, Davis found a way to take control of her musical destiny and define her own path, which is illustrated with vivid clarity on the highly conceptual ‘Fish Bowl,’ coming three years after her debut album, ‘Trophy.’ “She has this background of tremendous musical chops and that is poured into this record, but at the same time she is able to speak to her experiences,” said Stephen Thompson of ‘Trophy’ on NPR’s All Songs Considered. “As I listen more, the technical elements of her approach, her skills, her timing, her intelligence around arrangement … all of who she is is in this record, she’s just telling us about it in a different way,” Ann Powers added.
