By: Mike Thompson, Drums of Thunder
I’ll tell you this like I tell everyone else- you reeeeaally need to read Kat’s lyrics. They’re incredible. Or at least, I think so. I get asked if I have a favorite and I really don’t because I can’t leave any out, so I tell people to go read them all. But, I’ll try to pick some of my favorite excerpts to give you a starting point.
“The Push” first inspired me only because it was the first song we ever played together, and those lyrics are fucking mind boggling. But then came the first song we ever played in our first official rehearsal, “In The Morning”. After Kat told me the backstory for that one I just had to read the lyrics. She said the song was about when she lived in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco and what it was like to walk out her front door every morning on her way to work. When I read the lyrics they so perfectly described it and I was like “fuck, this is awesome”. Here’s the Pre-Chorus to Chorus:
~
Businessmen, transients, mothers racing off to destinations
Newspapers, credible headlines
Children with no education
Coffee conglomerates hypnotizing barely conscious nations
People are laughing and smiling
It reeks of beautiful life
Beautiful life
In the morning
-“In the Morning”, Sit Kitty Sit
~
The opening verse of “Waterstain” sets a cool scene for me. I picture a Sunday morning on a snowy day in winter, quietly reflecting over coffee in front of a fire. That sounds really nice to me, the freezing outside and the warmth inside. I really like winter sometimes.
~
Winter calling
Gotta little fresh on a killer magazine
Sunday scene
Gotta little heart on my sleeve
And a little coffee on the table leaf
– “Waterstain”, Sit Kitty Sit
~
What I love about her lyrics is that they’re anything but boring or cliche. There’s a really creative use of words and imagery with very little repetition. On stage, I always find myself shouting along to a particular line from “Superbia”, To break my fall from grace, which is such a great line.
Then there’s that center section in “Purge”:
~
I can just see me there under the surface
A Freudian slip hidden under my dress
As I twiddle my thumbs in anticipation
Cross dressing apathy
Open-heart sex
And she scabs over slowly
Her pain isn’t real
She’s calling her angels
They’re drunk at the wheel
She twists it off slowly
It bleeds as it comes
I mean seriously. That is just perfect. And it’s just not that often you see stuff like this in pop or rock music. That’s one of the great things about her writing, it’s unpredictable. I never know what’s going to happen, and I love it.
Currently, I’m tooootally into Blood & Bones. I think it’s one of our finest pieces, and I especially love the 4th verse which I feel is kind of haunting and gives a sense of the unknown:
~
Living here with strangers
We were driving through the storm with one eye closed
Never sensing danger
Or sensing what the future holds
I didn’t see your shadow
Slip beneath the stars
And we escaped into the night
But not without our scars
– “Blood and Bones”, Sit Kitty Sit
~
Damn, that shit is gold! What’s funny though, is the 2nd verse goes like this…
~
Choosing one direction
We were always just a day behind
Never catching up, never catching up with time
I didn’t hear the heartbreak
I didn’t see the sign
And somehow all these dots and dashes
Blurred into a line
~
…and I end up singing that part more! It just gets stuck in my brain, but I think I like the other verse better. I don’t know. I love them all, dammit!!
Anyhoo, the point of all this is that I’ve gotten chills more than once from reading the lyrics in context while listening to the tunes, and you as well should do yourself the service and feel that special feeling too 🙂
Sit Kitty Sit 