Concert Review: Kate Bollinger Is Cool, Calm, & Collecting

Okay, I start my review opening up with my mild obsession for Hulu’s The Deep End. If you have not seen the new phenomena, the show follows Teal Swann as both her and viewers are trying to figure out if she is a cult leader or a spiritual second-coming. Now, I am not saying Katie Bollinger is Teal Swanning, and turned Elsewhere into a nexus for ugly crying and emotional purging. Yet, she did garner her own cultish followers. 

As Kate smiled and lulled us into the feelings of feeling too much but never saying it enough like, living in a series of earthquakes but never seeing the ground shake. Imagine that! Every human being is a walking bottle of emotions that they never uncap because they either do not know how or want to, which is why I kept on thinking of The Deep End as I watched Bollinger. You can tell something about a person by what they listen to, how they react to it, and what they want to feel from it. For the Bollingers, as I call Kate’s fans, they want someone to validate their feelings, which is, sometimes, all it takes to make a cult or a fanbase. 

When it comes to the music industry, it is hard for it not to trip on its own “fantasy factory” tendencies, but people not only want to look up to artists; they also want to see within them. There is something so transparent to Kate’s style: from singing to playing to guitar. She feels so clear and unmasked, which feels refreshing in a world that has always loved an image. The irony is that it is her ability to present that makes her sing to our anxieties over the future so well.