An air of subtle melancholy graces Kate Stables’ gorgeous 7th studio album. She’s grappling with loneliness, isolation, and solitude but, through it all, she fights the good fight, adding hopeful inflections to her ever-beautiful vocals.
The concept of home haunts This Is the Kit’s tender, thoughtful seventh studio album, “Ghost Coat“. “I was interested in exploring our relationship with home,” says frontwoman Kate Stables. “Where home is, or was, where we come from, where we’re going. Sometimes it’s just where you put your bag down, especially for someone who travels a lot. Maybe it’s less to do with a place, and more who you’re with – people that make you feel like you’re at home.”
“Ghost Coat” captures the feeling that, no matter where we are in the world, homesickness can strike at any moment. “Quite often, if I find myself in a new place,” says Stables, “I’ll be really happy to be there, but then I always miss somewhere else which is tugging me away.” On “Lamp Post”, she sings: “I miss the city but I also miss the mountains and I also miss the sea.” This sense of yearning for someplace just out of reach infuses the album, which grapples with themes of human connection and the complex intertwining of loneliness, solitude and isolation.
Amongst the forlorn fingerpicking and homesick sighs rises an uplifting sense of community and human connection. And this is reflected in the crew she’s brought together for “Ghost Coat”. Bolstering her enrapturing folk pop are Dinked alumni Richard Dawson and Rozi Plain, alongside Sam Amidon, Ben Howard, Emma Broughton, and the Portron brothers – Valentin & Marceau.
Like the apparitional garment of the album’s title, This Is The Kit manages to successfully deliver something both spectral and warming, ghostly yet reassuring.
It’s a haunting, powerful record of a place, a time, and a talented group of people.
Ghost Coat”, the new album, is out on the 15th of January 2027.
