New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Baltimore-based indie-pop/Americana/folk singer-songwriter Katie Callahan is set to release her third album and second studio project, EXTRAORDINARY, on June 2, 2023. EXTRAORDINARY is what happens when a songwriter moves from observing the landscape to digging a well: once our eyes adjust to the darkness of internal experience, we can dive into caves and see beautiful things we never knew were there. Callahan is firmly rooted in folk traditions, telling lyrical stories with melody and words, but she is still relentlessly peering into the depths, always convinced there's more to uncover and share.
EXTRAORDINARY stretches the Americana and folk genres and bends them into different shapes, moving from acoustic instrumentation to sweeping and emotional indie/alternative pop anthems. "The instrumentation may be pushing genre boundaries," Callahan says, "but the heart of the music is always the same: it's about the story, it's about the words." All of the stories told in EXTRAORDINARY come from personal experiences, be it with mental health or interpersonal relationships or confronting old narratives that no longer serve and need to be painfully excavated.
The new album is a natural progression from her previous release - The Water Comes Back - and its look into feminine strength, as Callahan holds space for desire, loss, grief, anxiety, and forgiveness in the context of embracing her physical body. She hopes the album is a safe space for women to embrace what has been deemed unworthy, undesirable, shameful, or unladylike. Each of the seven tracks is inspired by chakra points: root, sacrum, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown. "Practicing yoga as a spiritual and physical meditation is a big part of my journey in healing my relationship with my body," Callahan says. "My practice is imperfect and really just beginning, but what I love about the chakras is that they're these centers of energy that connect the physical with the spiritual and emotional, which is what I wanted this project to do."
After promoting The Water Comes Back, Callahan found herself back in her "ordinary" routine. Unsettled and looking for validation that she was still growing and evolving, she turned back to songwriting as a means of affirming her own experience, her joy and wanting and rage all living in the good body of a woman getting older. "Writing this latest project feels like a jumpstart in my soul," says Callahan. "Like there's been an earthquake, and everything thus far in my life I've had in order is scattered and needs to be rebuilt, but in a different way."
For EXTRAORDINARY, Callahan paired up once again with producer/collaborator Matthew Odmark (Jars of Clay), who worked with her on the previous album.
Hannah Holbrook lends a delicate and restrained hand on keys, Megan Coleman and Luke Sullivant build a supportive and powerful foundation on drums and bass, respectively, and Lindsey Miller shimmers on electric guitar.
The first single, "Once at a Wedding," was released on March 10th, and it premiered earlier that week at Under the Radar, who wrote of the song, "'Once at a Wedding' leans into the starry pop side of the album, offering swirling reflective beats, pulsating bass grooves, and sparkling pop hooks… soaring harmonies and euphoric vocal performances." The song chronicles the complicated emotional dance of past and present colliding in an unlikely setting, the wedding of two precious and old friends.
Anxiety, something Callahan has grappled with for a long time, becomes especially evident in "Magnificent Beast (Keep It All Together)," a musical nod to
Brandi Carlile honoring Joni Mitchell. "I'm acknowledging that my anxiety is often tied to my intuition, so listening and discerning is part of my journey," Callahan says. With self-deprecating honesty, she digs into a litany of her own insecurities and tries to make peace with them amid a jangly piano, a driving rhythm, and acoustic guitar. The song is the second single from EXTRAORDINARY and was released on April 14th, with Americana Highways premiering the song the same week. They wrote of the song: "Preoccupation, juggling, a hope for something real, and the constant companion of our own anxiety and self-talk, they all get covered in this song. Listen and find yourself in the light of its reflection."
"There You Are," the third single, was released on May 12th; it is a song that emerged from Callahan's social media "Song-A-Month" project, which was a year spent gathering crowd-sourced subjects and selecting one every month at random about which to write a song and record a demo. One month offered the topic of forgiveness. The song evolved into the idea of her body forgiving the self for the way she'd been treated through a lifetime. "This is the most difficult song I've ever written," she explains. "I had to confront so many of my own demons to see the love beneath the lifetime of stories I'd communicated to myself through my treatment of my body." The song is a journey from young girlhood to motherhood, a story of Callahan's own experience with her body thus far. V13 premiered the song earlier that week and said it was "...representative of the personal journey that this album came to be."
Callahan grew up in Hawaii and is currently based in Baltimore, Maryland. Though she's written songs since high school, graduating from college into a recession with a failed marriage in tow stymied her desire to chase any dream of making music on a larger scale, and she kept her songs mostly to herself. It wasn't until her second daughter was born that she worked up the courage to take 12 years of work and compile it into her first produced album, Get It Right (2019), made over several years with some friends in a basement. Many songs on Get It Right, in Callahan's mind, were predominantly about men, and as the political climate of 2016 moved her away from her evangelical Christian faith of origin into uncharted spiritual waters, she knew she wanted to tell more female-centric stories.
With uncharacteristic boldness, Callahan reached out on a whim to the info@ email on the website for her favorite band, alternative Christian band Jars of Clay, thanking them for providing courage and musical inspiration over most of her life. She received a response and forged a connection with band member and now studio-runner Matthew Odmark. Callahan and Odmark met via Zoom to work on the songs that eventually became The Water Comes Back (2021), which unpacks her religious upbringing and faith transition while exploring identity and feminine strength.
The Water Comes Back was met with enthusiastic praise. "She is led by her passion for creativity, and her endless fascination with exploring both the world outside and her inner muses," said longtime Americana/country music journalist Alan Cackett. "She really is a masterful storyteller [with] engaging tales rife with vivid, stark imagery… The gleaming, wistful atmosphere of her songs is truly enthralling." Holler appreciated her "sparse arrangements and meditative lyricism." The album was dubbed "breathtakingly ornate, beautifully sculptured" (Exclusive Magazine); "a bright folk light" and "stunning" (Skope Magazine); "an undulating journey" (Three Chords & The Truth); "an intimate, spiritual and highly creative listen" (Take Effect Reviews), "magical" and "a joy" (Vents Magazine); "immediately likeable and engaging" (Americana UK); and "wordsmithing at its absolute best" (Amplify
Music Magazine). Off-Center Views named her artist of the month, and described her album as "...raw and honest... A gorgeous voice… superb lyricism, and meaningful themes, who could ask for more? So, here's my one-word review for this wonderful album: Hallelujah!" The promotion cycle for the album included funding a successful Kickstarter and self-producing several music videos.
https://www.katiecallahanmusic.com/
