Katerina is one of those acts in Leeds that, as soon as you listen to them, makes you wish you’d found them earlier. For those of you who missed her amazing headline show at the
brilliant Arches Social back at the end of June, her latest single, ‘Like Never Before’ may be your first introduction to her work and wow, what an introduction it is. Soft and tender, the track is a love letter to the friendships and relationships in her life that translates wonderfully onto the listener. Recorded at Leeds Conservatoire and incorporating string arrangements written by Karoliine-Lisette Kõiv all the way from Tallinn, Estonia, the song
truly is an expression of the power of music, friendship and care, close to home or far away.
It is details like this is the extensive layering of the song that gives it such a rich, deep feeling as it builds and builds from simple music-box like keys at the beginning to a collaging of
strings, horns, percussion, hearty bass and humming backing vocals by the end of the track that once again resolves with those nostalgia laden keys. This sequencing makes the whole song feel metaphorical for the lifecycle of the friendship so at the core of its creation. It starts with a simple greeting, gets increasingly complicated and nuanced and finally restores itself to the same nation that created it in the first place. In this, the track is expertly crafted in its restraint. It could aim for dramatic, bombastic and powerful through noise but instead it keeps the core humility of a loving friendship at its heart and allows itself to be vulnerable and to breathe. Yes, there is still emotion, yes there is still powerful, but that comes across
in Katerina’s expert use of her voice and lyricism instead of hitting you over the head with maxed out volume levels.
On that, Katerina here takes on a soulful at times R&B-esque tonation to her voice that goes from silken in the verses to harder and slightly biting in the choruses, really emphasising the power in the words therein. Her voice here feels almost conversational, personal, only rising
to those levels on the words that mean the most. The song tackle’s themes of friendships, its ups and downs, the tendencies to push away those who only want the best for us and the glue and bonds us back together afterwards. In that they contain a real sense of
universality that gives the track an emotional anchoring. Even the fact that the fact ends on humming from the backing singers makes it feel like a friend who has listened, who has
given you space to rant, agreeing and supporting you afterwards. Through this lens, the heart of the chorus, the phrase “To you I open up, like never before” brings new depth. This
song feels like a true window into friendship, opened and ventilated into the track to allow others to breathe it in.
In this you find the magical quality of the song, its earnest nature. It doesn’t sugar coat the human aspect of relationships, its not just a telling of the greatness of friendship, but to its
resilience, be that lyrically discussing arguments and reconciliation, or musically through the near 2,000-mile journey that the string section alone has made just to support a friend.
Katerina, here, has done a very rare thing, an honest exploration of herself that fells both completely authentic to herself and universally sympathizable by every listener. While this song may beautifully express the feeling of being truly seen by someone close to you, it also
expresses the creativity that comes out of such an experience and perhaps even more than that, it stands as a great reason to see what Katerina has coming up next as if it is even half as good as this, Leeds is truly a lucky city.

Review from William Hatfield – @wrh.2001