Too Soon To Unknow My Truth

Kate Bollinger “Shadows”

“Shadows” is a song existing in the angst-ridden limbo of some kind of managed break-up in which both sides gradually remove themselves from each other orbit. Kate Bollinger sings in a gentle high register and sounds even-handed on the surface, but pretty much every line in this song is basically saying “this is a really dumb idea.” She’s an emotional fatalist and knows her patterns well enough to recognize where she’ll be too soft and when she’ll be too cold. She essentially flips the famous Aimee Mann line “you look like a perfect fit for a girl in need of a tourniquet” into a warning that she stop the metaphorical bleeding only so much before she’s going to have to untie it. The first portion of the song feels like deliberately dulling anxiety through a stoner haze, but there’s more clarity in the second half in which some ambiance lifts and the music shifts to slow acoustic chords and she sings about the inevitability of them eventually aligning to hate each other in the sweetest tone possible.

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