Time seemed to stop July 15 when Katie Gavin posted a sensual behind-the-scenes of a photoshoot, noticeably empty of her usual collaborators Naomi McPherson and Jo Maskin, “declaring w.a.r.” MUNA fans were thrown — what was this going to be? What did this mean for MUNA’s future? Where could I get the custom sea-green Katie Gavin comforter for myself?
Not long after this, Gavin announced to the world her solo debut single, “Aftertaste,” would be released on July 23. After reassuring lesbians everywhere this was not a dissolution of MUNA, excitement grew gargantuan for what Gavin’s solo sound would be.
Well, now we know. And friends, it tastes so good.
Gavin’s “Aftertaste” is not necessarily a drastic departure from MUNA, but it’s clearly of its own motivations and inspirations. The song’s soft 90s guitar and percussion is reminiscent of a long lineage of lesbian sound, such as the Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, and Sophie B. Hawkins: a marriage of folk and alt-rock that my girlfriend referred to as having “wandered off the stage at Lilith Fair.” The focus of the song is much less the production than the vocals and their lyrics, which strike in their simplicity. It’s not out of nowhere: MUNA’s “Kind Of Girl” and “Handle Me” follow a similar pattern of folk-pop hybrid, in which the display is a hushed reverence in Gavin’s baring vocals and quietly devastating lyrics.
“Aftertaste” allows Gavin an opportunity to truly show off her capable storytelling. In a way it brings my mind immediately to Ani DiFranco’s “Both Hands.” While horny synth-pop is the lesbian genre of today, Gavin finds herself in the shoes of its folksy, flower crown-wearing past. Stripped down (literally and figuratively), Gavin is demanding more with less, and recognizing the ancestry from which such a song sprouts. Gavin herself describes the forthcoming album as “Lilith Fair-core,” and in the footsteps of DiFranco, Alanis Morrisette, and Fiona Apple.
The accompanying music video, as well, is a delight. Gavin, true to the song’s declaration that “I feel naked / when you look my way,” is a nude art model, wryly covered by easels, paintbrushes, and sculptures at opportune moments with her hands coquettishly covering her breasts. Interlaced with these are her replicating works of art, such as laying naked atop fruit akin to Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque, or cutting her own hair inside a pink shell that beckons Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. We get glimpses of the students’ studies of Gavin’s form, too.
“Aftertaste” exists the way imagining a chance meeting with an ex does: dreamlike, ethereal, simultaneously aware of the fantasy and indulgent in it. What would they say, and how would they say it? There’s a beautiful haze to such fantasies, even as the fantasizer recognizes the flaws in the dream, the plot holes of the imagination that do not align with reality. All this together calls forth an idea of perception, that Gavin recognizes herself as the object of the art, and all the ways that object can be perceived. Gavin’s nude body held together by a fan is as real as the Gavin beneath the flowing white sheet, staring into the camera as if it is her lover. We see Gavin trying on a variety of appearances, in the way we do with ourselves in our fantasies: imagining what we may look like to the lover, what we want them to see when they see us, what we hope they are still looking for even after all this time.
Gavin is a fierce presence — for example, while I was eating lunch and rewatching the video, I kept getting nervous about food in my teeth when her gaze pierced the camera. I don’t just mean Gavin is beautiful (though she is); I mean she commands attention in some powerful, alien manner. By the end of the video, the nude Gavin holds her guitar against her frame in an empty room, playing and singing the song’s end. This vulnerability is stark and, for me at least, feels new. Not that MUNA does not engage with vulnerability in their music — but in this solo debut, there is something unseen of Gavin up to now that feels like it is slowly being peeled back, like a gorgeous fruit.
As a huge fan of the lesbian musicians of yore, I am beyond excited to see this turn from Gavin. Her debut album What A Relief (which includes a Mitski feature, and is being released on Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records) comes out October 25, with a late-November/early-December tour planned. In the meantime, Gavin is performing at multiple festivals: Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival on July 27, and Illinois’ Evanston Folk Festival on September 7.
I think I speak for so many of us when I say we are gathering our granola, charging our crystals, and awaiting the chance to set this record to vinyl.
She is so pretty and beautiful.
She was just superb I love her thank god she made her debut.