Lockdown, Home Affairs queues, addiction, depression, cabin fever. Shotgun Tori sings to it all in her new EP, It’s Gonna Be Fine: a delicately expressed indie-folk commentary on all the multifold aspects of life.
The EP, recorded after she became a recipient of the SAMRO Music Creation Support Fund, sheds light on some of those everyday experiences just about all of us have. She has a knack for making the ordinary extraordinary – and against a compelling backdrop of acoustic folk preferences she does just that.
Opener “It’s Gonna Be Fine” sets the tone with acoustic guitars and pulsing brass inflection lending energy to a classic folk ode to lockdown. It’s peppered in universal experiences of the time – from banana bread to pants-less Zoom meetings. The energy peaks there though. The rest of the EP delicately navigates a variety of emotions and experiences, shining a spotlight on all those trials and tribulations of adulting.
From the atmospheric minimalism of “Driven To Drink”, which speaks for itself in a plea to be left be, to the poetic simplicity of “Unfolded”, whose moving nostalgia hits home without the listener quite knowing why. She waxes lyrical on getting through the hard days (“One Day Closer To The Rain”), the grating lost hours spent in the wrong Home Affairs queue (“Wrong Queue”), and acceptance in the cascading delicacy of “Cancelled”.
Cool, calm, collected and candid, Shotgun Tori brings it home.
Feature pic by Jess Sterk
