“I’ve got nothing to say // So I won’t say anything.” These are the first words of the opening track (disclaimer) of PL*NET F*TNESS, the new record from Pacing aka Californian singer-songwriter Katie McTigue. What’s going to happen here? If you remember her previous album, the beautifully titled Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink, but real life is behind a screen, then you know that few artists allow their thoughts to tumble so freely—layered, restless, and undeniably poetic.
The twelve new songs feel like a voice memo from the backseat of life, stuck in traffic between grief and yearning, trying to make sense of the daily grind. They deal with obligation—emotional, logistical, existential—and the ways we fumble through it all, looking for someone or something to follow. It also works so well because the underlying rhythms create the right mood., but the real charm of this idiosyncratic art pop LP is in the tension between reverence and mundanity, both skeptical and sincere, by a struggling genius really trying to care in a world that makes that too difficult. Pacing says a lot, but it always fascinates.
PL*NET F*TNESS—recorded, mixed and mastered by Ryan Perras—is out now digitally and on vinyl LP through Asian Man Records. Featurng Katie McTigue (vocals, guitars, drums), Ben Krock (guitars, bass), and Joe Sherman (drums), with Jackson Felton (drums, guitars), Kabir Kumar (bass), Copeland James (vocals, keys), Noah Sanchez de Tagle (bass), Saoirse Alesandro (vocals), Chris Gough (bass), Aidan Delaney (guitars), Ryan Perras (cowbell), Melody Caudill (vocals, guitar), and Jackson Felton (guitars, bass, drums) on select tracks. After eleven self-penned songs, the album closes with Never Go Down, a cover of Fred Rogers’ You Can Never Go Down the Drain.