What A Relief

Music often casts love as a game of absolutes: Heartbreak is the end of the world, and evil exes are obstacles to be overcome, rather than people to look directly in the eye. Life’s not really like that, though, and it’s rare that a songwriter truly tries to sift through the gray areas of quotidian romance in search of meaning. On her debut solo album What A Relief, Katie Gavin does just that: absorbing influences from over the course of her life and filtering them through the generational songwriting ability she’s honed as part of MUNA, What A Relief scrutinizes our collective need for intimacy and romance without judgment or harshness.

Described, accurately, by Gavin as “Lilith Fair-core,” What A Relief taps into the unguarded self-possession and homespun pop sensibility of singers like Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco, and uses their tenacity as a north star for Gavin’s own trek towards self-discovery. “This record spans a lot of my life – it’s about having a really deep desire for connection, but also encountering all the obstacles that stood in my way to be able to achieve that, patterns of isolation or even boredom with the real work of love” she says. “What A Relief explores and portrays it honestly, without shame.”

Written over the course of seven years, What A Relief comprises a set of songs that Gavin always loved but which “had something in them” that she and her bandmates felt didn’t quite fit within the universe they were trying to cultivate with MUNA. Many of them were written on acoustic guitar, the way Gavin first learned to write songs, and are rooted in “a style of music that’s very much in my blood, and natural for me,” as typified by the Women & Songs CDs that Gavin loves, which compiled music by artists like Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan.

A solo album wasn’t always in the offing for Gavin; it wasn’t until she started texting songs to friends – “If we were talking about some issue and I’d be like, ‘I actually just wrote a song about that” – that she figured she might have enough material for a solo record. Her friend Eric Radloff, who plays on What A Relief, further encouraged Gavin to make an album, and when MUNA signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ label Saddest Factory Records, Bridgers introduced Gavin to her long time producer Tony Berg (Aimee Mann, Edie Brickell) and said she wanted to release whatever came of their sessions together.

The resulting songs are stark, truthful and generous, drawing on experiences that are often felt but hard to put into words. On What A Relief, as on her work with MUNA, Gavin proves herself as one of her generation’s most deft songwriters, able to articulate discomfiting feelings with grace and pragmatism. On the gentle, finger-picked “Sketches,” a Rosetta Stone for the rest of the album, she lays bare her tendency to follow her own projections to a fault: “Thought my love for you was all time/Turns out all that time, I never loved you/Some of us can make a sketch of love to fall in, and I did.” Written about an unhealthy relationship in her 20s when her “life got really small,” “Sketches” feels like someone waking from a dream to find themselves firmly planted in a harsh reality. But, as with many of the songs on What A Relief, even these dark moments can result in self-determination, the track ending with Gavin “painting myself back.” “When I wrote ‘Sketches’, I really thought I was in love with that person, but I realized it was just a sketch of what I think love is.”

The counterpoint to “Sketches” is “Aftertaste,” which indulges in the headrush of new romance. Effortless in the way all Gavin’s best pop songs are – and, incidentally, written on the same day as MUNA’s 2022 hit “Silk Chiffon” – “Aftertaste” leaps and stumbles forward toward desire, its recklessness part of the fun. “That song takes place inside of the magnetic force, when I’m really drawn to somebody and still feeling like it’s gonna work,” she says. “Sometimes it’s fun to surrender to that feeling – I think a lot of songwriters have a strong relationship with romantic fantasy.”

Throughout What A Relief, it’s immensely gratifying to hear Gavin work through her feelings about intimacy and love in real time. “As Good As It Gets,” a collaboration with Mitski, reckons with the idea that healthy, long-term love won’t always be high highs and low lows, the calmness of its refrain – “I think this is as good as it gets” – both comforting and a little cold. “It’s about being in what I thought was a healthy relationship, and wondering ‘Is this good enough if I don’t feel high from it?’” she says. “There’s a little bit of disappointment there in the actual everyday experience of having intimacy with somebody.”

Elsewhere on What A Relief, Gavin writes deftly about familial ties, exploring ideas of motherhood and childhood through a distinctive lens. On the warm, minimalist bluegrass song “The Baton,” she writes about the knowledge and intimacy passed between mothers and daughters, as well as the generational traumas so many women inherit; the same idea recurs on “Inconsolable,” which touches on the bonds built between people raised in “households full of beds where nobody cuddled.” “Sweet Abby Girl,” written about Gavin’s dog that passed away, is a rich tribute to a kind of parenthood that’s rarely explored in song but profoundly impactful for many. “It feels exciting, almost like I’m on borrowed time, whenever I’m not talking about romantic love in songwriting – being a woman, there’s something that feels really cool about writing about other pieces of your life that don’t have to do with yourself as a sexual object,” she says. “I felt like I had permission to write about whatever I needed to talk about on this album.”

That sense of freedom was emboldened by Gavin’s community of musicians in Los Angeles, who encouraged them to put together a solo album and duly joined the sessions when it was time to put together a band. Berg’s production on What A Relief conjures a sound that’s nostalgic and modern, tying classic country and alt-rock sounds with uncommon instruments and electronic textures – think The Judds if they moved to New York City, or ‘90s Fiona Apple with a pedal steel.

And, true to that canon, these songs are magnanimous in their outlook, always reticent to lay blame or pick winners and losers. “Casual Drug Use,” the oldest song here and the most identifiably MUNA-coded song on What A Relief, was written after a breakup in 2016. Animated by a stomp that recalls classic heartland rock and road songs like The Chicks’ “The Long Way Around,” “Casual Drug Use” deals with substance use in a deeply forgiving way. “I knew that whatever I was doing wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, and it wasn’t going to work for me forever, but I needed to hear that I was still okay, and it was going to be okay,” she says.

That openness of spirit is the overwhelming character of What A Relief, an album that’s refreshing in its willingness to accept people as they come, even as it remains in dogged pursuit of a life that’s kinder, wiser and more loving. Gavin’s explorations of desire and intimacy feel time-worn and necessary – songs that might teach a generation if not how to live, exactly, then at least how to look within oneself for guidance about how to move forward.