Singer/songwriter Katie Von Schleicher, recently shared her new single, “Nowhere.” The track is off her forthcoming release Consummation, out May 22nd via Ba Da Bing. “Nowhere” follows lead single “Caged Sleep.” “The narrative is simple: I’m at home and promising someone I’ll leave any minute. I go out into the night, driving alone. Everything conspires to ride the line between comfort and the unknown – that’s my aim at least.”

Consummation is, in part, inspired by an alternate interpretation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In 2018, Von Schleicher rewatched the seminal film and was struck by its largely unanalyzed subtext of abuse. She knew immediately that this hidden narrative, which spoke to her personal experience, would be the basis of her album.

While writing and engineering the record, she found sanctuary in the words of other women: namely, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy and Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The latter proved particularly influential; soon after revisiting Vertigo, Von Schleicher stumbled upon Solnit’s lacerating take on the film, describing the “wandering, stalking, haunting” of romantic pursuit that it depicts as “consummation,” while “real communion”—understanding and mutual respect between two lovers—is, to the men in the film, “unimaginable.” The consequence is a fundamental failure of communication. At its core, Consummation evokes the pain of being unable to bridge that vast psychic distance between oneself and another. Can love that destroys, Von Schleicher asks, be love at all?