The people in Katie Herzig songs are here and they're not here. They're fragments -- broken parts -- lingering in their places, trying to understand what they are or who they've become. They've let flashes of Hell into them and they're looking for pieces of Heaven to flood the flashes out. They've let love in and they've seen that there are all sorts -- some of which are favorable and others that are much less so. They've been discolored by love, wiped out by the stuff.
Herzig's manner is one of a hot bath. She lets her music, her words and tone have a soak. They're marinated in something that borders the fine line between hopefulness and hopelessness. Or rather, it's neither of those, but some sort of helplessness of being -- knowing that the controls are often in the hands of something or someone else and you're just a vehicle, riding shotgun, in a bucket without a working seatbelt. Her characters ask not to be left behind in certain cases and in others they're addressing loved ones who are entering the unknown, as in the song, "Walk Thru Walls," a story of unburdening, of being "blissfully enchanted on the ground," but still with lots of phantom qualities to wade into and deal with. There's something of a release that's being sought there, a need to stare down troubles and come to terms with all the scars, bumps and bruises. Herzig puts us on a raft and pushes us out onto a lazy river -- ribbon that was choppy once, but all of that seems to be behind us now even if we're still shaken some.