It’s been nearly a decade since we’ve heard from Baltimore-based art-rockers Celebration, yet beginning in 2022 their band leader Katrina Ford began releasing solo material in collaboration with her longtime bandmate Sean Antanaitis. After collecting songs for a debut album in 2024, she returns today with her first new material since the release of H.E.A.R.T.: The standalone single “Transcending” is a psych-pop number that leans into warm layers of synths during the explosive chorus, in between more ambient new-age verses. “Sean [Antanaitis] wrote this fun vibraphone-sounding synth that sounds like excited tip-toes, then gallops into a rocking explosion,” Ford shares of the composition. “To me, it sounds excitingly restrained, then released with a heartfelt indulgence of joy. I wanted the words to match that feeling.”
As Ford explains, the lyrics reflect her struggle to avoid subject matter that reflects our often-doomy outlook. “It’s been a challenge to write ‘happy’ or ‘hopeful’ music, but I feel like it’s my responsibility to do so in times of so much division and destruction,” she continues. “I don’t wanna be a part of singing that darkness into existence. I’m looking for cures for that. At some point I became aware of the power of words. And to sing is to speak—we spell words into existence. Like creation magic, I want to bring this into form. I’m weaving a bit of fantasy here; I’m needing escape from this world. Wanting to transcend this earthly plane, a place of pain and sadness. This place where my body hurts, where entropy is dragging me to the pavement.”
Check out the visual for the track below.
