This Is The Kit is the musical project of Kate Stables, a British folksinger who has released several albums in her native country but is just beginning to gather a following stateside. Her 2015 album Bashed Out was released through the Dressner brothers’ label Brassland, which helped point some attention toward her off-kilter, gentle folk songs.
Now, she’s releasing a new album, her first for Rough Trade’s label, called Moonshine Freeze and has shared the first, self-titled single via a Rough Trade Session that debuted on NPR.
The self-titled lead single is a cyclical, upbeat song, which is in contrast to some of Stables’ older material, and features a funky melody plus some brass late in the song. For Stables, this new record is about storytelling. “I’ve been thinking a lot about truth and storytelling and the way that stories and truth change over time according to who’s telling them or who’s listening to them,” she said in a press release. “How personal stories accidentally become representative of bigger stories. How as groups and individuals, as humans, we use and need the stories we tell.”
In that same vein, the title of the album came from a story that Stables tells about a game she played as a child.
“At the end [of the game] it goes ‘moonshine, moonshine, moonshine — Freeze!’ and everyone has to stop moving,” she said. “And it really pierced me somehow. I think there are certain lines and melodies and little rhythms that hook into you and send your brain in spirals.”
Watch the session above and look for more coming from Stables.
Moonshine Freeze is out 7/7 via Rough Trade. Pre-order it here.
