“At risk of doing that whole ‘cryptic songwriter’ thing, I’d like to keep ‘Bella Tell’ open to interpretation. I don’t want to ruin the story. Sometimes I write songs based on very clear stories that were told to me, or that are known folklore, but this one is based on my own specific experiences and I wouldn’t want them to taint the listeners’ personal experience of the song based on their own histories. If I were to choose keywords for the song, though, they’d be these: RUCKUS, GUILE, GRIT, and DEBAUCHERY”
“Something I think quite a lot about is intention. Living at a time when things are constantly thrown at us, constantly changing, buzzing, flashing, it can be very easy to lose sight of intention. What vinyl represents for me is intentional listening. It’s an opportunity to break out of mindless scrolling and pressing buttons.
It’s delicate. It’s about listening to an album for the pure experience of it, rather than simply cutting the silence. It’s more than the listening too, isn’t it? It’s a full sensory experience—the smell of the record, the artwork, the feeling of it in your hands as you gently place it onto the player.
The first record that I remember experiencing is Santana’s Abraxas from my father’s collection. As a child of the ’90s, I believed the cover to be a Magic Eye, those trippy 2D images that turn into totally different 3D ones when you stare at them just the right way. I’m not sure I was that far off, and it’s a concept that can apply to the music as well.
Sitting and listening to that transcendent guitar, that percussion that gets your blood moving, with purpose, without distraction, that’s 3D listening. That’s experiencing music on another level.”
—Kate Vargas
“Bella Tell” is taken from Kate Vargas’ upcoming album, in stores Summer 2016.
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PHOTO: WILLIAM PHILBIN
