Magic voice of Katie Kim for free city show

Katie Kim will perform a free show in the Róisín Dubh on Thursday, January 26 as part of a triple bill that includes Puzzle Muteson and The Lost Brothers. Katie made waves with her debut, Twelve and will soon release its follow up, Cover and Flood.

“It’s a collection of songs from the last two years,” says the Waterford singer, also known as Katie Sullivan. “When I released Twelve, I had all these bits and bobs. I didn’t really know whether to release them as two albums or one. When I decided to make it as one album – about a year ago – it just felt right to put them all together. They all seemed like they were recorded in the same mind frame.”

Cover and Flood is a 20-track collection of home and studio recordings that showcases Katie’s ethereal voice.

“John Haggis, who used to be our drummer, got a grant from the Arts Council to convert a house into a studio, which he ended up calling Granny’s Studio. I recorded a good bit of it there, and then the rest of it was in my bedroom, really.”

Cover and Flood will be released as a double vinyl package. Why did Katie go for this unusual approach?

“I love vinyl!” she says. “And it sounds better than CD. I’ve just become so tired of CDs and how flimsy they are. I just think that people either listen to their iPod or they use turntables. I’m going to also release it on digital download.”

Katie believes that listening to an album on vinyl leads to a more in-depth experience, as the music fan doesn’t have the option of a ‘skip button.’

“When I’m holding the vinyl in my hand and I take it out and I put it on the deck, and I have to get up to change to side B – you sit down with it more,” she says. “Whereas I find when I do listen to music on my iPod – 80% of the time I don’t listen to the whole album from start to finish – I tend to flick.”

Some of the pieces on Cover and Flood are instrumental tracks that introduce longer songs. The way the whole work is presented demonstrates that Katie Kim is not about to unleash her ego at this early stage of her career.

“Even though it’s a double-vinyl and there are 20 songs, it’s only about 52 minutes long. So it’s not a huge self-indulgent release. I don’t expect people to listen to 20 full length songs for my second release!”The Feast is one the most immediately arresting songs on Cover and Flood. Did Katie make a deliberate effort to write an accessible tune, or was she following the muse?

“They really just come out the way they come out,” Katie says. “That one in particular, I think I was reading And the Ass Saw the Angel – it’s one of the first Nick Cave books. It’s a really gothic, really visual book. And that’s where The Feast came out of – that’s how the book felt to me.”

Katie is keen to credit her long-time collaborator John Haggis with adding a drum sound that really lifts The Feast.

“I recorded it and I went out; I came back the next day and there were drums over it!” she recalls. “And he said ‘look, if you like them, you like them. If you don’t, you don’t’. I loved them, so he really was a big part of that song as well.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.