“Find your voice, make a noise,” repeats the chorus of the second track on Katie Herzig’s latest album, “The Waking Sleep.” It’s an appropo message; in the time since her last studio album, the singer/songwriter has indeed found a new voice, one decidedly more indie than the girlish guitar-pop melodies that earned her a tour alongside Brandi Carlile and spots writing music for Grey’s Anatomy and Sex and the City.
“It completely got me outside of myself and let me try all sorts of new things,” says Herzig, of writing songs for television. “I really hope I never lose those challenges of writing music for film or commercials. They keep me on my toes and out of my comfort zone.”
If that comfort zone was the gentle croons and soft acoustic strums of her previous albums, then it’s safe to say boundaries have certainly been pushed. There’s more energy in this record, a vibrancy emanating from the bouncing, skating synth sounds and a voice that’s moved beyond a warm-voiced girl with a guitar, to a passionate woman making herself heard. Herzig’s trademark layering of sounds has evolved to incorporate synthesized melodies folded in and around the acoustic ones, which compliment one another so well the change feels organic, necessary even. “Sometimes you can’t tell which is which,” she says. “It’s a really beautiful thing about modern music and I think it carries with it a lot of power.”
The cinematic sounds of “The Waking Sleep”—the kind perfect for quirky romantic movies with heartfelt heroines—reflect the influence of time logged in television work on Herzig’s production. The songstress describes this album as both a natural progression and a giant leap, and in hearing the obvious evolution from her old sound, one has to commend her for breaking her own mold. This is a more mature album, from the haunting, Regina Spektor-like depths her voice reaches on tracks like “Closest I Get” and the title track, to the lyrics themselves, which leave behind the cliché relationship woes to address what Herzig feels are the “bigger questions about things going on in the world. Like a lot of people, I’ve felt constantly overwhelmed by the state of the world and find myself asking how it will work out and how we can solve things,” she says.
The year-long effort of recording “The Waking Sleep” was a deeply personal experience for Herzig. She explains, “My mom, who recently passed away, used to compare me releasing an album to having a baby. In some small way it is; you just care so much for it, you want to give it the best life it can have, and as much as you want to control it, it takes on a life and personality of its own.”
Her labor certainly paid off; ultimately, this album shows an artist’s commendable evolution and a voice finally waking from its own creative sleep.
- Mickie Meinhardt
(Photos by Clément Pascal)
