Premiere: Garrett Kato shares part one of his new two-part EP, s. hemisphere

Header image by Jess Parkes.

Byron Bay-based musician Garrett Kato is someone we’ve really come to love over the last year. While he’s definitely become somewhat of a mainstay in guitar-backed, busker-friendly indie-pop (both in the limelight with his own work, and behind the scenes working with Ziggy Alberts, Kyle Lionhart and Riley Pearce), the musician has really stepped it up over the last twelve months with some of his greatest work to-date; tracks such as this year’s Julia Stone-assisted single Breathe It In and last year’s combo of Control and Holding On To You cementing his place is shimmering guitar-pop and its sheer beauty when done at its best.

Those singles, all shared over the last six months, have been teasing a new double EP to arrive across the space of this year. The first half, s. hemisphere, includes all the tracks shared thus far and recollects and reflects on his experiences in the southern hemisphere (as the title suggests), while the second half – due for release later this year – contrasts it with tracks about his time in the northern hemisphere; a place where Garrett Kato has been spending more of his time as he grows from a local favourite to an emerging, promise-filled name causing a stir internationally.

Premiering today ahead of its official release tomorrow, s. hemisphere are a collection of tracks that showcase Garrett Kato’s songwriting at its most potent and beautiful, taking the soft harmonies of his work – the gentle-licking guitar melodies, his charming vocal – and exposing it to the lyrically rich songwriting that Kato has become well-familiar with over the years. Take Breathe It In, for example, a track about “someone when you’re messed up” that takes a fictional story of “a couple's deteriorating life together from substance abuse” and repositions it into a beautiful, narrative-built track that highlights exactly the kind of songwriting we’re talking about.

"s. hemisphere i s a goodbye letter to North America. The songs were written about the changes and challenges I faced in creating a new life on the other side of the world,” he explains on the EP’s first half. “s. hemisphere is reflective in a way. It is about the most polarizing time of my life, moving from Canada to Australia. So many changes happened. I met someone here, fell in love, and got married.

“Ten years later, I have two kids, a house, and all of these things. I made this life out of nothing. I think about how I ended up here, what I gained, and even what I lost by moving away from family.”

Dive into the release below:

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