With their 2020 tune “Fly in My Room,” Kerrin Connolly netted over two million Spotify streams with the question “How many open windows scared me / When I could have had fresh air?”
Four years later, the Boston artist has braced themselves to face that query, and lingers halfway between the present and a window to their next era: One leg planted in old patterns, the other dangling over the unknown, but wholly present in their new album Transitions.
Connolly’s new project — out today, October 18 — conveys the disorienting excursion we call adulthood, immortalizing the flux of your late 20s with lanky guitar riffs and instantly-relatable one-liners (“Let me catch up to the part where it’s all finally fun” from “Interim” a prime example). On the brink of turning 30, Connolly tapped into personal topics like anxiety and “going no contact” with a parent, inviting the challenges to invigorate their sound and sense of self.
“This album explores the desire to find my power and carve a way out of feeling like a passenger in my own life, rather than continue to be complacent with it,” they tell Vanyaland. “I don’t want to stagnate — but it’s also so hard to make moves when you’re comfortable! Not only is there pressure to stay young, cool, and relevant as a sometimes-professional creative person, but also in my day-to-day [life]. ‘Photogenic Memory’ and ‘American Psomething’ both speak to that in different ways — getting older, living under capitalism, finding mirrors in everything, and trying to stay present when the past and future are much more captivating.”
Some songs, like “Interim,” came together amidst navigating these concerns; others, like “Fingertrap,” are sighing but wizened glances at old conflicts. But regardless of when they completed each song in the writing process, Connolly knows they’ll be reacquainted with the same themes in due time.
“There’s definitely a difference in approach regarding where my focus is — am I trying to actively come to terms with something, or am I reflecting on a bed already made?” they note. “But I think the great thing is that these songs represent feelings I’m going to keep having — changes I’ll repeatedly go through — just in different contexts. I like to keep things at least somewhat vague so they can continue having new life like that, and so they can hopefully resonate with other people too.”
Tap in below, and catch Connolly’s album release show tonight at The Cantab in Cambridge with Merry Merry and Pretty Late.