First impressions can be tricky; sometimes they hold up, and sometimes we end up scratching our heads, wondering what we were thinking.<\/p>\n
My first impression of Katie Pruitt was, in a nutshell: What. A. Voice. <\/p>\n
The first song on Expectations<\/i> hadn\u2019t faded from my earbuds before I\u2019d landed on Pruitt\u2019s website to order a copy of this album. A few days later it arrived and went into The Stack, as the small skyscraper of to-be-reviewed discs next to my monitor is known.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, when I hit \u201cplay\u201d for a second time a few weeks later, history repeated. \u201cWishful Thinking\u201d enters with gentle electric chords and fiddle and an airy atmosphere that Pruitt fills up with a voice that is absolutely beguiling: clear and husky, vulnerable and strong, at ease with everything from a whispery entreaty to a full-throated demand. By the time she started hitting the big notes at the steady-building song\u2019s climactic crescendo, every last hair on the back of my neck was standing at attention once again.<\/p>\n
Atlanta-born, Nashville-based Katie Pruitt grew up in a Catholic household and went to Catholic schools. By the time she reached high school she was an experienced musical theater performer and a budding guitarist and songwriter; a few years later, at 23 she won the Buddy Holly Prize from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. An initial 2018 EP drew attention from Rolling Stone<\/i> and NPR, the latter lauding Pruit as an artist who \u201cpossesses a soaring, nuanced and expressive voice, and writes with devastating honesty.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pruitt\u2019s Nashville base has contributed to her being identified as a country artist, and her music has some of those elements, but to these ears, her songwriting has more of an Americana singer-songwriter feel to it, featuring perceptive and often soul-baring confessionals that build on the folk tradition using both country and roots-rock elements.<\/p>\n
The artist Pruitt matches up most closely with\u2014and whom she acknowledges as an influence\u2014is Brandi Carlile. That influence is evident on \u201cMy Mind\u2019s A Ship (That\u2019s Going Down),\u201d a grand, dramatic number addressing mental health that\u2019s part power ballad and part Broadway show-stopper. By contrast, the title track follows with a \u201970s soft-rock vibe, a sprinkle of Joni Mitchell here, a dash of Dan Fogelberg there as this thrummy number gradually balloons outward. \u201cOut Of The Blue\u201d is where the country elements come on strong for the first time, a gorgeous ballad that finds Pruitt nailing those Big Sky notes, pulling you in with her expressive delivery. <\/p>\n
Track five is the moment when Pruitt goes from circling the perimeter of the main issue she\u2019s been grappling with to facing it head on. \u201cNormal\u201d is a stunning, heartrending song about trying to figure out who you are, and realizing what the answer to that question means for you. \u201cScared as hell \u2019cause I knew I was different,\u201d she sings, \u201cWhat’s it like to be normal \/ To want what normal girls should.\u201d Finally, she meets her first true love: another woman. \u201cThe world told us to fit in but we did the opposite.\u201d <\/p>\n
From that peak, Pruitt piles on with one powerhouse after another. The brooding \u201cGrace Has A Gun\u201d opens up like an acoustic Jason Isbell murder ballad but eventually explodes into the sky. Then \u201cSearching For The Truth\u201d delivers another lyric full of hard-won insight beyond her years: \u201cIt feels like I’m still searching for the truth \/ In a world that’s always lying.\u201d And then \u201cGeorgia\u201d puts a capstone on this run of songs, a tremendous, soul-baring piano ballad about growing up gay in a conservative environment and finding community through music. <\/p>\n
The emotional arc of the album is completed by a pair of love songs. First \u201cLoving Her\u201d features sunny acoustic picking as Pruit declares: \u201cIf loving her hurts, I\u2019ll keep on hurting \/ If it means staying true to who I am \/ You may not agree but like me you\u2019re learning \/ That people don\u2019t like what they don’t understand.\u201d Then \u201cIt\u2019s Always Been You\u201d closes things out with a gorgeous, piano-and-strings ballad of love and devotion. Does it go on a bit? Maybe, but wow.<\/p>\n
Pruitt is one of those rare singer-songwriters whose voice feels like a perfect match for her lyrics, all at once vulnerable and powerful, gritty and pure, rangy and in complete control. Expectations<\/i> is an intense and powerful debut from an exceptional talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[11066],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-47136","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-katie-pruitt","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47136"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}