Album Review: Katie Buchanan Asks “Who We Are When We’re Standing?”
Katie Buchanan brings a grassroots vibe to her new album, Who We Are When We’re Standing, and such an aura is needed when asking that important, life-affirming question. We all get those rare, beautiful, and terrifying moments when we become completely self-aware, and ask ourselves whether we are standing on our spirit’s highest ground. This Kansas native’s album provides a country-electro album to help us discover if we are.
Katie Buchanan provides nine songs to fill your heart, and you wonder whether your mind and soul are equally filled. Instrumentally, the NYU alum gives a voluminous chord mixed in with synths that feel like sparks firing from a candle. This allows her to have a pop vibe that makes her more accessible to radio-play. I can, definitely, see Katie scaling up the Taylor Swift ranks to provide listeners an grounded sense of fun and thoughtfulness. Tracks like, “Floating”, “Doubt In My Mind”, and “What Breaks A Heart” use subtle, vibrant arrangements to back lyrics that are all about losing one’s vibrancy. There are moments when you do not know if you are being your brightest, smartest, kindest, and most virtuous, and those times of insecurity lead to Buchanan’s record’s basis. From “Stand With Me” and “Beginning And Ends”, Katie shows that your inability to achieve rise to your spiritual “best” can stump you in relationship roads and personal goals. Hence, the album’s actual question is, “If you know you are better then how do you actually become it?”
With a voice that is soulful and feels, symbolically, smoked with a bourbon of truth, Buchanan smoothly sings for poetic honesty. She wants to be raw enough to strike listeners humanity, but beautiful enough to strike their imagination. Thus, showing that her years of studying music were NOT wasted by creating every track to support and prove how rich and sentimental her vocal range can be. “Time Is Not A Plan” and “Oh Lord” appear ready-made for country juke-boxes eager to hear a song based on the routined realities of living and measuring up to the natural peace of sitting with friends and slowly downing a cold beer. For More Information On Katie Buchanan and To Buy Who We Are When We’re Standing on June 9 Click Here.
