This Is The Kit: 2017

British singer and songwriter Kate Stables records as This Is The Kit with a mutable line-up of musician friends. For her remarkable fourth album, Moonshine Freeze, Stables dips into a well of myth, mystery, superstition and even nursery rhymes.

Her songs, like the mesmerizing incantation “By My Demon Eye,” are playfully and poignantly arranged, punctuated by brass or a briskly plucked banjo. Stables' vocals warmly overlap and counterpoint those of her bandmates; the effect is not unlike like a child’s round or a murmured magic spell.

Moonshine Freeze marks the second time that Stables has worked with producer John Parish, who has also guided recordings by PJ Harvey, Eels, and the late Sparklehorse.  This Is The Kit’s last album, 2015’s Bashed Out, was produced by another friend, The National’s Aaron Dessner, and he appears on this new album too, along with Stables' frequent cohorts Rozi Plain, Jamie Whitby-Coles, Neil Smith and her partner, Jesse D. Vernon.

The Hampshire-born Stables, who is based in Paris these days with Vernon and their daughter, travelled to FUV’s Studio A for the first time this spring for a session, joined by Plain and Whitby-Coles. The trio talked about their formative years in Bristol and the inspiration behind the lyricism of Moonshine Freeze.

[recorded: 6/20/17]