Von Schleicher Katie: Consummation

Katie Von Schleicher doesnt hold back. Her music drenched in layers of warmth and fuzz mines depression devotion power and anxiety without reserve. But if channeling weighty subject matter is a constant in Von Schleichers music so too is transforming that material into sonic landscapes that defy expectations. On Von Schleichers second record Consummation she blasts past the lo-fi power ballads of her debut Shitty Hits 2017 with a severe expansion of her sonic palette its thirteen shape-shifting songs depict a deeply personal exploration of trauma. The result is both potent and listenable strange and familiar intense and entertaining-and perhaps most of all teeming with life.Consummation is in part inspired by an alternate interpretation of Hitchcocks Vertigo. In 2018 Von Schleicher rewatched the seminal film and was struck by its largely unanalyzed subtext of abuse. She knew immediately that this hidden narrative which spoke to her personal experience would be the basis of her next album. While writing and engineering the record she found sanctuary in the words of other women: namely Carmen Maria Machados Her Body and Other Parties Rachel Cusks Outline trilogy and Rebecca Solnits A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The latter proved particularly influential: Soon after revisiting Vertigo Von Schleicher stumbled upon Solnits lacerating take on the film. Solnit describes the wandering stalking haunting of romantic pursuit that it depicts as consummation while real communion-understanding and mutual respect between two lovers-is to the men in the film unimaginable. The consequence is a fundamental failure of communication. At its core Consummation evokes the pain of being unable to bridge that vast psychic distance between oneself and another.

1.1 You Remind Me
1.2 Wheel
1.3 Nowhere
1.4 Caged Sleep
1.5 Messenger
1.6 Loud
1.7 Strangest Thing
1.8 Can You Help
1.9 Brutality
1.10 Hammer
1.11 Power
1.12 Gross
1.13 Nothing Lasts


H 0.19
W 12.36
L 12.78