Each track on Katy Pinke’s Strange Behavior—her viscerally affecting big swing of a sophomore record—feels like an act of transformation. In the Manhattan-based singer-songwriter, painter, and actor’s songs, characters navigate through persistent emotional adversity, push against the limitations of their understanding, and make peace with ambiguity. Pinke outlines their trains of thought in a lithe soprano that recalls Connie Converse or Blossom Dearie, within angular songforms that bring to mind Bill Callahan and Syd Barrett’s winding musical syntaxes. Her avant-rock arrangements are full of playful and unnerving complications, with contributions from multi-instrumentalist/co-producer Nico Osbourne, guitarist Will Graefe and drummer Jeremy Gustin of Star Rover, and more.

Across a given song, Pinke exhaustively follows an emotional event from start to finish, moving from a modest kernel of thought to a final offering-up of the self to fate, the cosmos, or to one’s own mercy (see “Strange Behavior,” where the band and Pinke explode in the final moments, finally acting out the behavior). Through this process, she helps her narrators work towards a clearer view of themselves, underscoring their trajectories with odd electroacoustic flourishes and full-tilt rock’n’roll interjections. Few songwriters reach as tirelessly and earnestly toward revelation with as much single-mindedness and generosity of spirit.
-Winston Cook-Wilson, NYC, November 2024