Katrina Ford Releases TO THE LIGHTHOUSE Album, Shares 'Killer Jane' Single

Katrina Ford has released her new album To The Lighthouse. The release is accompanied by the single 'Killer Jane' — the LP and its singles 'Transcending,' 'Winter Sun,' and 'To The Lighthouse' have earned praise and support from Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, FLOOD Magazine, Northern Transmissions, and more. To The Lighthouse is a continuation of Ford's soulful, psychedelic, left-of-center chamber pop.

The album is light yet dense, atmospheric yet rhythmic, constantly dynamic. The sum of its parts contrast in order to form a perfect amalgamation of texture and melody, resulting in a bold, extraordinary, and imaginative sonic landscape. Delivered with proper fervor and reverence, To The Lighthouse is Ford's strongest statement to date.

''Killer Jane' was the last song written for the record,' Ford says. 'It started out as short one-part demo that Sean had written a couple years ago. It was just a simple beat and a low-fi synth flute that kind of sounded like a public service announcement style or 70s children's music- ish, just a bit cheesy and over these Prince and the Revolution-style '1999' wiggly synths as well. It was indulgent.

Well, we had that on a demo playlist for a few years. I kept coming back to it. I found myself whistling the flute often. So eventually, one dark and stormy night we opened up the session, I just began joking and riffed a bit about stray dogs. The demo had been called 'Stray Dogs' for no particular reason, but I was inspired to write 'Lucky, Killer, Jane ' thinking those are all names that you give street dogs. The story kinda wrote it itself.

We added the sound of chain-link fence and sampled me yelping like .… 'it takes two to make a thing go right' (Rob Base inspired). Once we got into the studio for final recording, we added Michael Lowery on percussion and Matthew Pierce on flute. Everything was made in layers and pieces, kind of like a musical collage, which I feel like gives it a bizarre, dreamy feel or reverse-world feeling. It's a dance song under the influence.'

About Katrina Ford

How do you cope with a sky that won't stop falling, and what does it take to keep your feet on solid ground when things seem more unstable than ever? Katrina Ford's third album To The Lighthouse faces these universal questions dead in the eye, armed with equal parts electrifying positivity and curative reflection. Along with longtime collaborator Sean Antanaitis, Ford has crafted a musical missive that encapsulates the soulful and left-of-center psychedelic pop sound she's embraced since emerging in the 2000s as the frontwoman for Celebration—and it's another brave and honest step forward in an extremely accomplished career.

Ford describes To the Lighthouse as her first 'post-pandemic' record, as its predecessor H.E.A.R.T. from 2024 was largely composed during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the decade has lurched forward, Ford has found her creative spirit wrestling with the daily horrors with the modern world, reaching inwards to find the light that guides her through. 'It's a dark time in the world, and it's hard to know what to say,' she says. 'We need more sweetness and hope, because we have to survive whatever's happening in this world and remember the goodness in humans—because it's easy to get nihilistic when there's so much nasty behavior out there.'

Work on To the Lighthouse began while Ford and Antanaitis were putting the finishing touches on H.E.A.R.T., and as a result it expands on that album's chamber-pop grandeur with great aplomb. 'It's dense with a lot of instruments,' Ford states, citing the varied textures of 1980s pop as well as the scores for classic films like Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun as central influences for the record's sound: 'The older that I get, the more that I can appreciate that part of my childhood. It's moody, sensual music, but it's accessible in a way that anybody can feel its power.'

Along with mixer Steve Wright and Future Islands sticksman Michael Lowry, legendary producer Robin Millar—who was behind the boards for Sade's classic Diamond Life—recorded Ford's vocals for To the Lighthouse cut 'Transcending' in his London residence. Otherwise, the creative process resembles the same approach that has already made Ford's catalog of music so strong to date. 'Sean and I hang out and jam in our basement, and we start sculpting it from there by layering on top of the demos and removing what doesn't work,' she explains. 'Eventually, we end up with the foundational tracks, which we do right at our home studio.'

The title of the record—as well as its title track, which is loaded with skyscraping synths and tactile rhythmic syncopation—was inspired by the classic Virginia Woolf novel of the same name, as well as the symbolic representation that lighthouses have taken on for Ford. 'Lighthouses are like a light in the darkness—a guide,' she says. 'I've been writing songs for a long time, and I've dug up my whole heart and soul and put it on a platter many times over. At this point, I take different jumping-off points that aren't necessarily my own to draw from.'

To wit: the celestial soul of 'Pluck' was inspired by a photo Ford found on Reddit that wasn't exactly what it first appeared to be: 'It looked like this amazing sunset with these birds in a spiral formation—but when I zoomed in, I realized with horror that it was a spider web with dead bugs on it. I decided to write a poem inspired by the photograph, and that became the song.' 'Transcending,' in all its anthemic glory, was inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono's first encounter at the latter's art exhibition, with Ford proclaiming 'Yes to everything' near the song's end. 'I get sick of saying no to everything in my environment,' she explains while talking about the song's thematic bent. 'Maybe it's naive optimism, but I want to say 'Yes' to transcend the suffering that we have on this planet.'

Then there's the lush, psychedelic pomp of 'Winter Sun,' which took lyrical inspiration from a location near the Tropic of Capricorn where, twice a year, the sun takes a place in the sky that allows for no shadows to form underneath it. 'It's wild, and to me, it became a metaphor for having no faults, no shadow work,' Ford reflects. 'What would that be like, and what was it like before you had those things? We accumulate so much psychic garbage over time that we get jaded and sad. Wouldn't it be nice to just shake off all that s?'

And To the Lighthouse is fully representative of that persistent spirit—as Ford continues to stare the future straight in the face and push forward. 'I'm tenacious, and I don't give up,' she says while discussing where this music finds her in her current place in life. 'I'm making music that's not hateful, angry, and bitter—and I really could be, but it's not the right way to be, especially in the face of everything that's gone on. I'm grateful that I'm still able to do this, and I have so many great friends around me for the journey as well.'

Tracklist

1. Culture Vulture

2. Winter Sun

3. Transcending

4. To The Lighthouse

5. Pluck

6. The Optimist

7. Killer Jane

8. Candle

9. Back To Base

Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz

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