Blue Raspberry (LP)

Let's face it: There's no such thing as "real life". There is only experience and the negotiations we undertake in order to share it with other people. On her second album Blue Raspberry, the New York-based songwriter Katy Kirby dives headlong into the artifice of intimacy: the glitter smeared across eyelid creases, the smiles switched on with an electric buzz, the synthetic rose scent all over someone who's made herself smell nice just for you. An exegesis of Kirby's first queer relationship, Blue Raspberry traces the crescendo and collapse of new love, savoring each gleaming shard of rock candy and broken glass along the way.

Blue Raspberry follows Kirby's acclaimed debut album Cool Dry Place, which was also recorded in Nashville and released in February of 2021. While the songs on that record unfold amidst Kirby finding her voice, Blue Raspberry is a polished and confident sophomore effort that deepens the questions that bubbled through Cool Dry Place about how people can reach each other despite all the hazard zones where human connection caves in.