A few weeks ago I was blown away by the vocal powers of Greco-Australian singer Kate Pavli when her band supported Italian rockers Halflives in Camden. Performing as Finding Kate, I’d previously enjoyed her brand of dark, emotional rock, but seeing the powerful delivery of her vocals live was the icing on the cake.
Kate tells us she has always dreamt of being a singer and that music has always been central in her life. From appearing in musicals and her dad blasting rock tunes from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam and Bon Jovi when she was growing up through to developing a taste for the music of edgy female rockers like P!nk and Avril Lavigne in her teenage years, the rocker path was set in stone.
As Kate tells us: “I didn’t know if I would be in a band like Evanescence or Paramore, but sort of started being solo when I took part in a local competition in Cyprus in 2012, where I met my producer Chris. A couple of years later, we started working together on some tracks that he had written and since then I’ve been a “solo” artist with a backing band. Chris and I are essentially “Finding Kate” but we are not a duo. I have different musicians in London, in Cyprus who support me at different shows. Being a solo artist has its positives and negatives of course, but at this stage it could not all of a sudden turn into a band due to the nature of the writing process which stems from me or Chris.”
Kate released her debut album If I Fall just over a year ago, and has been building momentum towards a follow-up record later this year. In her words: “I definitely feel that a lot more fans and people have been discovering my music now as opposed to when my album was first released.
“My new music is still at early development stages but what I can say is that I am so excited to be developing these new songs with my producer Chris. I feel my new songs will be an evolution of the first album: dark, deep but a bit more modern and experimental. Also this time I have about 12 of my own songs written from scratch as opposed to Chris’ songs from the first album, so any music we release will definitely have a different touch.”
When it comes to writing, Kate explains that her lyrics have evolved over the past couple of years. She said: “In my first album I mostly wrote lyrics, and they were about heartbreak, pain and letting go of someone. Now when I sit down on my piano, I have soooo many ideas going around my mind. I feel things a lot, I feel peoples’ energy, and I am very aware of peoples’ feelings, probably much more than I am of my own feelings. I get very emotional when I see people struggling or stressed and so I have started to feed off of everyday life and others around me too as, opposed to just me. I’d say a topic that is quite prominent is pain, struggle, love and life.”
We’ll freely admit it doesn’t sound the most positive but, as Sum-41 so succinctly put it, pain for pleasure. This comes across perfectly in the deliciously delicate yet powerful track Forever, which starts off with a big rocky intro then drops into Kate’s almost fragile vocals supported by piano, then bursts into a big singalong, almost anthemic chorus. The piano returns with a bit more of a rocky support for the second verse, then feeds into a bigger, extended version of the chorus. Check it out in the video below:
But a personal favourite from the debut album is Get Over You, which really shows off Kate’s voice at its powerful best in the emotion-racked cries of “I didn’t mean nothing to you” and the huge vocal-led outro. You can check that out in the video below:
As mentioned, there’s new music coming soon from Finding Kate, and we’ll bring it to you as soon as we hear it. Kate tells us: “I am so excited for the new tracks, they are very personal to me and I can’t wait to get back to recording and really working on them. No gigs are currently planned but I am looking at hopping on bigger support slots hopefully in the near future.”
You can follow Finding Kate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and check out her music on Spotify and YouTube.
GigRadar 