Aunt Katrina – “Peace Of Mind” [Video]

DEBUT ALBUM – THIS HEAT IS SLOWLY KILLING ME – OUT JULY 11th

Ryan Walchonski was writing a lot of songs when he first moved to Washington D.C. in 2021. Some went to the Pittsburgh-based noise pop group Feeble Little Horse while others were tucked away for Aunt Katrina, a solo project and a communal leap of faith into a strain of guitar-driven music that is noisy and ephemeral, digital and raw, polished and playful.

After releasing an off-kilter noise pop EP called Hot in 2023, Walchonski spent early 2024 writing Aunt Katrina’s full-length debut. He later brought the demos to Alex Bass (Snail Mail) who helped flesh out their production, mixing and engineering these nine tracks to bring them over the finish line. These songs delight in taking two disparate parts and exploring how they interact, resulting in a beautifully unexpected third thing. Descriptors that come to mind are “slowcore” or “dream pop” or “electronica” as do thoughts like “has anyone coined ‘laptopgaze’ as a genre yet?; “Could a house of cards be blown away by guitar feedback?”; And “what if Oasis traded their anoraks for Orioles gear?”.

The circumstances of recording inspired the album’s title, This Heat Is Slowly Killing Me. “The van I was driving at the time had no air conditioning and I was driving to record at Alex’s house in College Park, Maryland 2-3 days a week in the absolutely brutal D.C. summer weather,” he explains. “I was listening to the band This Heat and feeling like their music was killing me.”

These days, Walchonski lives in Baltimore and no longer plays in feeble little horse. This Heat Is Slowly Killing Me further nods to D.C. by channeling the collaborative energy of the city’s legendary punk scene. “This album and band was created with the help, support and love from so many people,” Walchonski (songwriting, guitars, synths, etc.) says, noting creative contributions from Ray Brown (Snail Mail; drums), Eric Zidar (Tosser; guitar) Nick Miller (live bass), Laney Ackley (lyrics, live guitar), and Emma Banks (lyrics, art direction, live keys).

As for the songs, they touch on loss, disillusion, and impermanence. “A great many of my personal relationships had completely changed, and my writing was struggling to find a way to grapple with this,” Walchonski says. A desire for stability is apparent on “Peace of Mind,” which blends finger picked guitar with electronic samples and synthesizers into woozy recognition: “Got caught in the rainstorm/I’m falling apart/Got cut into pieces/I’m falling apart.”

Walchonski’s lyrics are relatively straightforward and This Heat… prefers the emotive power of melodic textures. “As someone who may struggle to express myself in more conventional ways it is a freeing experience to be able to say things that I don’t know if I could say otherwise,” he says. The tightly layered anguish of “Ran Out of Time” is interrupted by a digital sample that repeatedly slices through the tension before the outro collapses open into a rush of noise. “Four Corners” wanders in a trance, lost in confusion until a wave of noise offers a cathartic wallop. “I don’t think I could ever make music and have it sound like one thing,” Walchonski says, and This Heat… dabbles in la-la-la English guitar pop, bittersweet fuzz, and shapeshifting electronica, like the interlude “Bait,” an ambient breakbeat collage made with Pittsburgh’s Alvin Row. As a whole, This Heat Is Slowly Killing Me edges into the unknown and explores the limits of expressiveness.

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