(Photo Credit - Nadine Fraczkowski)
Advance Review - Okay Kaya: Watch this Liquid Pour Itself (January 24, 2020)
Okay Kaya’s debut album “Watch This Liquid Pour Itself” encapsulates the way I feel waking up from a depression nap; still sad, still alive, should probably go switch my laundry, but I wonder what I missed on twitter... At first, the 15-track album waiting in my inbox intimidated me, but I found the album an incredibly easy and mostly lighthearted listen. It definitely takes a millennial sense of humor to dreamily laugh along to her cheeky lyrics about the side affects of our anti-depressants, being sexually unsatisfied, confusing love and the honeymoon phase, and all the food we turn to for comfort in troubling times.
Okay Kaya’s lyrics are a coded language of meme’s and relatable tweets set to ambient beats and whimsical melodies that make me imagine the glittery pastel post-bath bomb water circling the drain. The album opener and Okay Kaya’s second single “Baby Little Tween” is already stuck in my head, maybe forever. It has a groovy beat that catches the ear, and a critical listen to the lyrics has me whispering “omg same…” to myself over and over. In fact, I find a majority of her lyrics to be uncomfortably relatable. Kaya’s ability to touch on modern relationship tropes hits home in songs like “Insert Generic Name” “Asexual Wellbeing” and “Popcorn Heart.”
She unflinchingly pinpoints all the things an entire generation wants out of relationships in juxtaposition to what we are actually getting and settling for. Her lyrics “if you don’t love me at my guttural sound / you don’t deserve me at my guttural sound” you can go ahead and put on my headstone.
This album will most likely remain high on my list of favorite albums this year because I find comfort in artists that can so candidly encapsulate living with mental illness into songs that don’t make me sad, but rather make me laugh and feel seen. “Overstimulated” is a track that resonated heavily with me; the lyrics “you say good morning the same way I say goodnight; are you awake?” recall many a late anxiety fueled night for me. “Stonethrow” and “Zero Interaction Ramen Bar” make my isolating nature feel validated. Okay Kaya injects her Norwegian heritage into the album with the entirely Norwegian tune “Helsevesen” which sent me skittering for a translation; it’s a song that makes me yearn for those mornings I wake up and actually feel genuinely “okay,” and how those “okay” days can feel like a dream or a vacation from the norm.
I can’t wait for this album to be officially released so I can send it to all my friends to listen to! For now, I’ll be listening to it on repeat while I curl up with a book that I’ll probably neglect to scroll through twitter instead.
Rating - 4/5