It’s been three years since Kate Teague’s self-titled EP introduced listeners to her dreamlike sound, and her latest release, Loose Screw, is an expansion of her subtle and masterful songwriting and her gently ferocious voice. An exploration into the Big Questions that keep people up at night, Loose Screw also asks its listeners: What does dreamlike mean, anyway? 

Loose Screw confronts this question by situating its songs on the borders of dreams: this is a nighttime record. The first single, “Poison Mind”, drops listeners into a late night low point for Teague, starting “Oh yeah when the moon is high / and the lowest thoughts are taking over” and situating us in the pit of her insomnia. As she asks later in the song, her self-doubts shimmering, her mind slipping in and out of sleep, “Am I good at this? Should I quit? Should I have kids?” Dreamlike doesn’t always mean hazy and gentle. Dreamlike can be desperate, painful, and raw.

There are other dreams on Loose Screw, be they night terrors or the nagging pressure of a certain kind of life. On the quiet and otherworldly “Annie Banks,” Teague dreams of wedding dresses: “I know I’m good at dreaming of the gown / That I will wear for my final bow,” before ultimately pushing those thoughts aside: “But I have much more fun in colorful outfits / I’d rather change it up than have a commitment.” And in the aching and instantly memorable “I Feel Bad for My Dog”, Teague’s soaring voice rises from a hush to pity the pet lying in bed with her as she tosses and turns, suffering through another half-slept night. 

Written in New Orleans during 2020 and 2021, the songs on Loose Screw were born during the lowest point of Teague’s life, a time of self-doubt and self-incrimination that, for a long time, she felt was better to leave behind. After recording the songs with producer and multi-instrumentalist Clay Jones at his studio in Taylor, Miss., in the summer of 2021, she set them aside for more than six months, feeling they’d done all they could do for her—providing a kind of catharsis that left her emotionally depleted—and that it was best not to dredge back up any of the feelings associated with them for a while.

But then she did. Now, the time that Loose Screw documents is a time she’s ready to let go of, as she moves forward on new projects and collaborations in her new hometown of Memphis, Tenn. The point has come in which she is finally ready to look at this time capsule of her own late-night self-interrogation, hand it off to the world as nothing more than a memory, and move on. 

These songs are a product of intense isolation, and, later, of collaboration. Recording with musicians Adam Porter and Will McCarley on bass and drums respectively, and once again with producer Clay Jones on guitar & synth. Together, the songs on Loose Screw are a testament to Teague’s impressive journey since her 2019 release and a thrilling example of what she’s capable of now that she’s shared this majorly moving (and slightly haunted) EP with the world. 

During a tough time, it’s easy to want to sleep, to black out, to get out of your life however you can, just to sink into that blissful betweenness. But first you have to get there. You have to lie down, ask the unanswerable questions, confront the streetlights out the window, confront the things you said that day, the things you did five years ago, the choices you made by not choosing, the things other people are saying about you, the fact that maybe no one is saying anything about you at all. Loose Screw is a prayer before bedtime—a challenge to face what’s hard and put it behind you, eventually, just as Teague has done for herself with this confident, sweeping, and cathartic EP. 

Written by Mary Marge Locker