Late to Kaya

You know the feeling. You come across someone—a voice from a speaker, a face on a screen—and in the space of about ten seconds you understand with total clarity that this person is going to mean something to you for a long time. Rational brain has nothing to add. The decision is already made.

That’s what happened with Okay Kaya. Kaya Wilkins is Norwegian, which explains the specific quality of cold running through her music, and she lives in New York, which is why it doesn’t stay cold—something gets lit under it. She writes songs called Clenched Teeth and I’m Stupid and Damn, Gravity, which are funny in the way that actual pain is sometimes funny: which is to say, not jokes at all. Her voice is quiet in a way that has nothing to do with softness. She sounds like someone who has decided, very carefully, how much to let through.

I have no good excuse for missing her until now. She’s been out there, making music, and I just didn’t catch it. The embarrassment lifts quickly once you’re in it—and then there’s just the backlog, which turns out to be its own pleasure. There’s still time to fall down the full length of it.

She wasn’t playing Germany when I found her, which I decided to interpret as appropriate. Some artists you should come to on your own terms first, before the question of standing in the same room becomes real. I’ll get there. For now I’m listening, repeatedly and without apology, to someone I probably should have known about since the beginning.