Amoeba Music

UPDATE: We are now SOLD OUT of tickets for the signing portion of this in-store event. If you have a signing ticket, it will guarantee your admission to the performance AND the signing after.

For fans who do not have a ticket to the signing, we have created a different ticket that will guarantee your admission to the performance only. To get a ticket for the show, purchase Katie Gavin's new album What a Relief in-store only at Amoeba Hollywood.

All ticketholders will line up on the Argyle side of the store on Tuesday and will be brought inside first for priority placement.

If you do not wish to purchase the album, you may join the standby line on Hollywood Blvd on Tuesday. We will bring those fans inside for the show after the ticketholders, while space permits.

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Katie Gavin (MUNA) celebrates debut solo album, What A Relief (Saddest Factory Records), with a live performance and LP signing at Amoeba Hollywood Tuesday, October 29th at 5pm!

Show is free/all-ages. To attend the signing, purchase Kate Gavin's What A Relief on vinyl LP in-store only at Amoeba Hollywood starting October 25. Space is limited.

Signing info:
 

*  Purchase What A Relief LP starting 10/25 in-store at Amoeba Hollywood to receive a ticket to attend the in-store signing.

*  Katie will sign copies of her new album for this special event. No outside or additional items please

*  1 LP + signing ticket per person

*  Signing space is limited and artist has limited time- no photos or personalization will be possible.

Music often casts love as a game of absolutes: Heartbreak is the end of the world, and evil exes are obstacles to be overcome, rather than people to look directly in the eye. Life’s not really like that, though, and it’s rare that a songwriter truly tries to sift through the gray areas of quotidian romance in search of meaning. On her debut solo album What A Relief, Katie Gavin does just that: absorbing influences from over the course of her life and filtering them through the generational songwriting ability she’s honed as part of MUNA, What A Relief scrutinizes our collective need for intimacy and romance without judgment or harshness.

Described, accurately, by Gavin as “Lilith Fair-core,” What A Relief taps into the unguarded self-possession and homespun pop sensibility of singers like Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco, and uses their tenacity as a north star for Gavin’s own trek towards self-discovery. “This record spans a lot of my life – it’s about having a really deep desire for connection, but also encountering all the obstacles that stood in my way to be able to achieve that, patterns of isolation or even boredom with the real work of love” they say. “What A Relief explores and portrays it honestly, without shame.

On What A Relief, as on her work with MUNA, Gavin proves herself as one of her generation’s most deft songwriters, able to articulate discomfiting feelings with grace and pragmatism. “Aftertaste” indulges in the headrush of new romance. Effortless in the way all Gavin’s best pop songs are – and, incidentally, written on the same day as MUNA’s 2022 hit “Silk Chiffon” – “Aftertaste” leaps and stumbles forward toward desire, its recklessness part of the fun. “As Good As It Gets,” a collaboration with Mitski, reckons with the idea that healthy, long-term love won’t always be high highs and low lows, the calmness of its refrain – “I think this is as good as it gets” – both comforting and a little cold. “It’s about being in what I thought was a healthy relationship, and wondering ‘Is this good enough if I don’t feel high from it?’” she says. “There’s a little bit of disappointment there in the actual everyday experience of having intimacy with somebody.

“Casual Drug Use,” the oldest song here and the most identifiably MUNA-coded song on What A Relief, was written after a breakup in 2016. Animated by a stomp that recalls classic heartland rock and road songs like The Chicks’ “The Long Way Around,” “Casual Drug Use” deals with substance use in a deeply forgiving way. “I knew that whatever I was doing wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, and it wasn’t going to work for me forever, but I needed to hear that I was still okay, and it was going to be okay,” they say.

That openness of spirit is the overwhelming character of What A Relief, an album that’s refreshing in its willingness to accept people as they come, even as it remains in dogged pursuit of a life that’s kinder, wiser and more loving. Gavin’s explorations of desire and intimacy feel time-worn and necessary – songs that might teach a generation if not how to live, exactly, then at least how to look within oneself for guidance about how to move forward.