Life moves pretty quickly in New York City, and Caitlin Starr has been doing her best to keep up, which is evident in the release of her sophomore EP, where the 25-year-old singer-songwriter turns the exhaustion of constantly being on the move into a collection of messy, energetic and deeply personal punk-rock songs.
The title plays with the familiar sayings “Jesus saves” and “speed kills,” questioning why so many of us have convinced ourselves that working harder, moving faster and never stopping is somehow the answer to everything. For Caitlin, who’s spent the past few years chasing her musical ambitions in Brooklyn, that pressure is more than just an interesting concept. It’s something she’s lived through, and the EP explores both the temporary thrill of keeping busy and the inevitable crash when everything finally catches up.
There’s plenty happening across Speed Saves, and Caitlin isn’t particularly interested in keeping things tidy:
“Will u b My Girlfriend” turns the anxiety of an intense crush into a frantic, grungy rush of guitars, while “Pass Me By” finds her wandering through Manhattan with her headphones on, trying to make sense of feeling left behind in a city that never seems to stop. Then there’s “Cage,” which takes aim at the circumstances that keep people trapped in exhausting cycles of work, money and expectation, complete with an instrumental passage designed to resemble a panic attack.
But perhaps the EP’s most revealing moment comes with “Piece Of Clay,” Drawing on Starr’s background as a classically trained jazz pianist, the song begins with melancholic piano before expanding into a dramatic wall of guitars and orchestral-inspired textures. Its questions about identity, body image and how much control we really have over the people we become give the record a particularly vulnerable centre.
That feeling of losing control also drives the music video for “Piece Of Clay,” directed by Villacortabuer and filmed at the abandoned Letchworth Village in upstate New York. Caitlin appears as a character in a survival horror video game, seemingly controlled by somebody else as she navigates an unsettling environment. It’s a clever visual representation of the song’s central anxiety: the sensation that life is happening to you faster than you can make decisions about it.
“We filmed it at an abandoned children’s asylum; we made sure to be respectful of everything that went down there and could definitely feel an intense, eerie energy,” Caitlin says. “We got shut down by the cops and had to sneak back in the middle of the night. The song is about feeling out of control and not like yourself — in particular, my experiences with eating disorders and bipolar — and being shaped by circumstances in a way that feels so deeply rooted and against your will.
“I think a lot of us feel this way right now; exhausted, overwhelmed, dysmorphic. When everything’s moving so fast and pulling you in a million directions, it’s hard not to feel swept up in it and forget who you are. It often feels like a video game where someone else has the controls.”Caitlin Starr on her newest release
Speed Saves is more than just another collection of loud guitars and relatable frustrations, as Caitlin understands the strange contradiction of wanting to escape the pressure while also being addicted to the momentum it creates. Sometimes moving fast feels like freedom, and sometimes it’s just another way of being trapped. Across this EP, she captures both sides without pretending there’s an easy way to hit the brakes.
