“I wrote ‘Magical Ending’ about the search for happiness in life and what it means to me. After taking a hard look at myself and the world around me, I realized that it is not this fairytale ending I was searching for. I was looking for the moment I would arrive, and found that it is in the journey where my greatest joy comes from. There is a small light even in the darkness and that is my love I keep giving to the world. I can go on pretending and ignoring who I really am or I can realize that the magic is all around me now.”
—Katie Barbato
Katie Barbato is always surprising us with her whimsical folk rock reveries. There seems to be a never-ending fount of sophisticated, melodic riches to be discovered on her newest EP, “The Art of Falling,” and we love how unselfconscious, bizarre, and vibrant her new music video is.
“It was fun to conceptualize themes related to magic that appear in fairy tales and mythology—but give them a tacky, cheesy, violent, and playful green-screen twist. The style of the video and the style of the song are somewhat incongruent, which is what Katie wanted, so it was fun to work within that paradigm,” the video’s director Max Margulies tells TVD.
The Philadelphia native has been cultivating her unique style of twangy, heartfelt, socially aware folk rock since she migrated from Boston a few years back. Her sound is fully formed and wonderfully nuanced, like a mystic lovechild of Jeff Tweedy and Gillian Welch. She combines the purity of the latter of with the offbeat Sky Blue Sky-era country of Wilco, striking a delicate balance between self-effacement and deeply meaningful songwriting. I guess a spoon full of sugar does help the medicine go down…
“Magical Ending” is lifted from her recently released “The Art of Falling” EP and follows the drop of the titular cut’s music video, which has garnered praise from For Folk’s Sake, Adobe and Teardrops, and WXPN.
