Watch the ‘Snacks’ video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK-fWbgfJds
Stream/Pre-order Surviving is the New Living via Jagjaguwar: https://okaykaya.ffm.to/surviving
None of us are made for isolation. And yet, some of us find portals of escapism. The vanities of day-to-day life fall away and the creative gland begins secreting at a new clip. Okay Kaya’s peculiar, imaginative, oft-gorgeous bedroom soul seems ready-made for these tragicomic ‘strange and uncertain times’.
Holed up in a Copenhagen apartment after the remainder of her European and North American tours were cancelled, Kaya Wilkins began demo-ing with her friend Nature Boy. The session quickly developed into a fully-fledged and stunning new collection of songs, aptly titled ’Surviving is the New Living.’
For all intents and purposes the collection will henceforth be recognized as a “mixtape,” though you will soon hear it ascends to something far greater.
Rather than an addendum to her 2020 album ‘Watch This Liquid Pour Itself,’ ‘Surviving…’ stands as its own bold statement and underscoring of Kaya’s songwriting prowess.
The subtle acumen of Kaya’s voice has never been more clear — in one moment it’s an elegant contralto on the level of Sade; the next moment she approaches the fricative hoarseness. Kaya’s voice contains multitudes. See the first moments of the horny, avant-R&B standout “Bill Withers”, in which a creepy and low masculine moan rises and rises into something breezy. Written several weeks before Withers passed in April, the song is, in part, a loving nod to his light-touch songwriting: “I wanna feel like Bill Withers did/When he rhymed intuition with wishing.” In Comic Sans she finds herself in a different dimension entirely, a reality based on wonky lettering, she begins to exist in a contradictory state less severe but much worse, somehow.
Kaya is known for laying bare the crevices of human sensuality and exploring the slipperier terrain of the modern psyche, but on ‘Surviving is the New Living’ we (alone but together) join her on the expedition — too horny for quarantine; folding towels with vigor; scrubbing until we’re numb; waiting for some locksmith to let us out like he’s Godot.
We’ll be out of this soon enough but for now, we have this raw, delightful and ultimately powerful love note from Okay Kaya.
Tracklist:
A
Comic Sans
Baked Bean
Squish
Das Obst
DJ
Knagg
B
Bill Withers
Palm Psalm
Kiss The Sky
Snacks
5th Harm
