The Singles Bar: Katmaz feels the pressure to be ‘Alone (with Me)’

Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.

You can never know how dangerous it is to live with your own thoughts. It’s the kind of emotion-fueled psychedelia you must experience yourself – and we all do, sooner or later. When we seemingly drown in a cosmic sea of space and time, a mental state provoked from heartbreak, failure or any kind of gutting catastrophe, you have to let it all happen as it will. Brooklyn’s alt-folk singer-songwriter Katmaz feels is his body bends and breaks as he descends down into the mind-warping muck with his new song. “Alone (with Me)” appropriately casts his vocals through a prism, his version of mayhem, and it all soon fragments and splinters into a dizzying vocal wonderland. “It’s hard to be alone, what do you know,” he sings on an ill-fated loop.

It’s a refrain that never ends, at least not in the throes of it all. “I’m floating my way down to earth again / Reaching for the ground I still pretend / That you will be waiting for me,” he feels every emotion deeply and unapologetically. The arrangement is equal parts folksy, delightfully strange and urgent. He continues, letting the words be his final resting place, “Your hair is gliding through the breeze / I’m dropping to my hands and knees / Content to hide in your shadow / You always move.”

Katmaz’s pleas are seemingly all in vain, but it’s the catharsis that will inevitably set him free. “Alone (with Me)” is a healing agent, and even by the final frame, though he may not be complete yet, his redemption is coming. On the song, he says in press materials, “[This song] was written as a love song to a woman who moved across the country, but it quickly developed into a song about the unattainable. Inspired by a failed long distance relationship, it is about getting close to having someone you want, but cannot have. Sonically, it’s the exact opposite. Major chords and fun vocal melodies mask the underlying lyrics. it is happy and sounds like a love song, but the lyrics are dark and a bit sad.”

“Alone (with Me)” is the latest in a string of singles this year, including “Let It Go” and “On to the Next.”

Listen below:

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