Reviewed by Oscar Hyde

Although Katie is a believer, this Colorado-based singer/songwriter is largely unknown in "Christian music circles" and it's the broader music community that have taken to her deliciously eccentric art pop. Her voice quivers, wavers, wobbles, twinkles like a sonic star; her songs are stuffed to bursting with unusual instrumentation; her lyrics delight in unexpected twists and turns, though always staying relatively simple, even childlike. Quirk irks some, I understand, and for reasons with which I can sympathise. The most common trap into which purveyors of quirk fall is that of style over substance-songs get squelched beneath lashings of bells and whistles (to mix metaphors). Happily, that's not at all the case with 'The Waking Sleep'. Katie's songwriting skills have broadened even further since her previous masterpiece 2008's 'The Apple Tree', so we're treated to wide-eyed innocent romance with nursery rhyme structure ("Best Day Of Your Life"), surprisingly weighty and dark-tinged exhortation to self-expression ("Make A Noise"), and a meditation on faith reminiscent of Sara Groves ("Daisies And Pews"). At the same time, the album really does overflow with brilliant touches of arrangement, Katie's earlier baroque folk-pop compounded and strengthened with little bleeps, bloops, squiggles; rhythms and microrhythms roll in and out of each other. Take the gliding, free-wheeling strings of opener "Free My Mind"; the gloriously happy piano chords clanging up against the cello-driven swinging, skipping sunshine-rush "Way To The Future"; the moment when the furtive piano of "Midnight Serenade" catapults upwards in an ecstatic synth riff, vocals reverbing everywhere. 2011's 'The Waking Sleep' may not be, strictly speaking, the happiest album you hear, but it's certainly the most fun.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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