When boredom would set in for a young Kate Vargas, her mom had a sure cure. “Go outside and pretend something,” she’d say.
That was easy in Corrales, N.M. With a current population of a little more than 8,600, the town had “two paved roads and no stoplight” when Vargas lived there. These days, she’s in New York City—about as similar to Corrales as a tricycle is to an 18-wheeler.
Those two very different worlds collide with a percussive impact on Vargas’ fifth album, Golden Hour In The House Of Lugosi, out this summer on Mother West. The music is Americana at its most open-ended, an ever-evolving recipe of jazz, rock, blues and slinky acoustic grooves. Vargas calls it “junkyard folk”—and her rugged, vulnerable, innately soulful vocals are the not-easily-defined glue that holds it all together.
The new LP’s two-for-one single, “Downtown”/“I Once Was A Contender,” is part post-party confessional, part hymn to the fallen.
“The main theme of this couplet is egotism,” says Vargas. “It could be either two separate characters or one character at different ends of her timeline, dancing quite intimately with her ego. Musically, I tried to give her space to do this.”
We’re proud to premiere Kate Vargas’ “Downtown”/“I Once Was A Contender.”
—Hobart Rowland; photo by Gary Russell Wertz, Sacred Dog Ranch
