Pacing - Real Poetry

“Just because Katie McTigue approaches her music with a bone-dry sense of humor doesn’t mean she can’t take it seriously.” – THE ALTERNATIVE

“Ironic yet also somehow entirely sincere… holds up the everyday in all of its surreal and often torturous truth” – VARIOUS SMALL FLAMES

“Deceptively sardonic but emotionally gripping music” – GRIMY GOODS

Pacing is the San Jose-based anti-folk project of Katie McTigue (she/her). Various Small Flames wrote that she “follows in the playful, tongue-in-cheek tradition of the likes of Kimya Dawson, yet always nudges the ideas further to be more than mere twee humour or sardonic fun.” McTigue has built a small but passionate community online where she is known for memes and crowd-sourced art projects. (View full bio)

Direct quote from Pacing:

I’ve always been intimidated by poetry. Well, more intimidated by poets themselves. And more than a little suspicious. Do you really have all those feelings just from looking at a tree or a flower or a bird or a wheelbarrow or a pair of shoes? Don’t even get me started on the ocean. If I sound a little bitter, it’s because I am. I assume I simply lack the capacity to feel to the extent that Real Poets do, due to some flaw in my nature. Or maybe it’s the mindfulness that I lack, thanks to the thousands of hours I’ve spent scrolling my phone frying my neurons. I’ve checked Twitter three times since I started writing this. I think the obvious theme of this record is “What is real?” “Real” is a word people throw around a lot, like “real food” or “that’s so real.” I like thinking about stuff like “what counts as real art?” I don’t think of myself as a Real Musician because, well, I’m just obviously not one. I think of myself as more of a Person With Some Stuff to Say.