Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – To Follow and Lead

On her upcoming new album ‘The Kid’, due out on 6th October via Western Vinyl, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is planning to span four cognitive and emotional stages of the human lifespan. In doing so, she’ll cover two LPs, and four sides, in which we’ll be taken on a journey from being a new-born through to later life.

With the album’s lead single ‘An Intention’, Kaitlyn captured the sense of ignorance that comes with not being aware of one’s surroundings, the music becoming ever-more distorted as the child’s awareness of the world grew. On new track ‘To Follow And Lead’, she’s skipped a phase, landing in the third stage of awareness in which a person starts unravelling their own personality through experimenting, following and discovering new things. As a result, Kaitlyn’s track displays a kind of playfulness associated with early development, carrying itself on blocky, childlike percussion before blossoming into an alt-electro-pop stomper. With its introduction of strident synths and other soundscapes, it builds on its initial foundation, breaking free from the template and experimenting to find its own definitive path. In that way, it perfectly reflects the stage of development that it’s based on, marking another success for Kaitlyn’s mapping of cognition through sound.