LA native Caity Krone released debut EP Work of Art on September 25, building on the back of the acclaim garnered for featured singles Thank You For The Sunday Paper and the immersive pop of I’ve Been Lonely. The EP is an expansive exercise in classic Laurel Canyon-esque songwriting, bolstered by a modern swagger and regular earworm hooks strewn across its five genre-straddling tracks.

Described by Krone as an ‘unrequited crush’ record, Work of Art reveals many influences that have allowed her to reclaim her own confidence and find a sound that showcases her staple ‘golden three’ as well as well as her LA upbringing and current musical peers. Caity spoke to Secret Meeting to reveal more…

My three favourite albums

My golden three are Carole King’s Tapestry, Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. To me they’re no skips, and embody everything I hope to be able to accomplish with my music: being deeply vulnerable without hiding behind enigmatic metaphors; being straightforward with storytelling while never voicing a thought commonly; hearing the truth of those stories not only through the lyrics but by hearing them sung straight from the heart of the writer.

If I could make just one person feel the way I felt when I listened to So Far Away, Dreams, or Help Me for the first time, I would be happy.

To me, my favourite moments in music are when the production, vocal, and lyric all come together to create this moment deep inside you that feels bigger than the sum of its parts.. maybe that sounds silly… and so subjective too, but the way the piano leads into Carole singing ‘one more song about moving along the highway’, the part of Help Me where Joni goes ‘didn’t it feeeeel goooood…… didn’t it feel goooooooooooodddddd?’ Those moments just feel like everything to me.

One book I love

This is a terribly predictable answer, but I loved Laurel Canyon by Michael Walker. I’ve always been deeply connected to the music that came from that community, and I read the book when I was on a really isolating and lonely trip to Nashville. I would read the book in this coffee shop every morning, and like magic For What It’s Worth (by Buffalo Springfield) would come over the speakers. While I was reading, I thought about how music these days felt more like competition than community — an industry boys club centred around numbers and Instagram smoke and mirrors more than music. These days, I feel like there’s such a strong community of women making and working in music that’s formed around me — from my team to all of the incredible young women in LA self releasing music and telling the best stories out of anyone (McCall, Georgia Greene, Jensen McRae, Bella Porter, Ayoni, just to name a few). If you think about those records back then, even the ones by boys, there were so many women behind on the credits, or just all around making the songs better.

One film I love

I always get made fun of in conversation because I haven’t seen enough movies. I’m trying to catch up. One day I went on a Wes Anderson binge and watched all his movies (Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Life Aquatic are my favorites). I love Grand Budapest Hotel — the colours, set design, and costuming inspired my song Hotel on a Mountain. I think the best thing art can do is beget more art.

One song that’s important

The song on my mind lately has been a song I wrote called Tangerine. It’s not out yet… but it’s the first song I wrote towards my next record. I used to get so annoyed when artists would release an album and then be like ‘on to the next!!’, but I really get it now. Before I wrote this song, I thought maybe the songs on Work of Art were the best I was ever going to be able to do, and if nobody liked these songs that would just be the end. That song was the final step in being ready to put this body of work out because it was like, ‘Okay, this isn’t all you can do. You have so much more to say. You can write better songs. You need to have faith in yourself and your stories. This is just the start’.

The song that informed Tangerine the most (Zeppelin and Lana Del Rey, were runners up with Norman Fucking Rockwell and Going to California), is Joni’s Woman of Heart and Mind off of For the Roses. I love the way she writes about rock stars and starlets and men looking for the next thrill, how they all must be so empty. I love the way she writes about fame, and how she cuts right to the point without being too forgiving or too unforgiving. The way she can capture an experience she’s never known the way she did in Woodstock.