Charting a Tender Path Out of Personal Darkness, Kate Vogal Strikes a Deep Resonance With Anyone Suffering From Deep Depression on “Reasons to Stay”

The title to Kate Vogel’s “Reasons to Stay” sounds like it’s going to be about reconciling a relationship that was on the rocks or to stay someplace where you felt you no longer belonged and which seems to have changed beyond recognition but you rediscover everything you took for granted. And in a way it is about all of that. It’s about one’s relationship to oneself, to one’s learning to appreciate the things in one’s life that seemed at one point beyond your ability to perceive. It’s a song about reconnecting with the feelings and thoughts in your head that you thought were gone, driving you to dark places and contemplating not sticking around in the ultimate sense. The song is driven by simple yet evocative piano work and Vogel’s tender, resonant and versatile vocals. Her specific voicings and arrangements bring to life the struggle back from the edge and having convinced oneself that you have nothing left in a way that doesn’t feel like some faux posi pop song, it feels like it’s coming from a place close to the heart and not just because Vogel experienced the kind of anguish and darkness about which she sings, she captured perfectly how compassion, patience and sensitivity, even tenderness, with self and others are the only paths out of that place. Her focus on the small life details, listing them off from her specific experience, easily extrapolated to anyone else’s own life, that are easily forgotten in the depths of despair are also the things that seem important enough to your brain to pull back from one’s personal abyss. Listen to “Reasons to Stay”