by Craig Howieson

Sometimes in life, one of the bravest and most beautiful actions you can take is stepping forward. Taking a bold gamble with eyes aloft and focused on a new tomorrow, this simplest of motions can provide an intoxicating and invigorating shake for a life trapped in stasis. 

Catkins, the latest single from Raveloe (Kim Grant), bursts with a forward momentum. Restless, probing guitars and loping bass make a bolt for the horizon from the track’s outset, and the fuzzy edges of Grant’s guitar tone snarl with a passion over and above what could be laid under clouds of distortion. What begins as a unique tanglement of 80s jangle-pop and the lighter end of the post-punk spectrum, pivots and splays into a wonder of ethereal indie.

Over the course of its four and a half minutes, Grant’s voice is fit to fight the battle to be heard over swelling guitars, and, as the track grows and grows, we eventually find it twice its height by the closing notes: a new entity for a new day. The determined drive of Catkins shimmers with a sense that it is possible to leave the darkness of the past in your wake – and, in taking that first step, you are a little farther from what you are leaving behind, and immensely closer to the life and person you want to be. 

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