On hitting the play button on Button, the latest release from Hockitay, I found myself really back in the headspace I occupied when I first heard Clairo’s beautiful, heartbreaking song Bags. Claire Cottrill has since gone on to become the kind of artist they would sell in a supermarket if people still bought music. Which isn’t to necessarily create a similar pressure on Hockitay.
All of which is to say, Hockitay’s new single occupies a certain loose and hungover space. Guitars are strummed, but only gingerly, baggy drums kick more or less to time, and Hockitay’s layered vocal feels compressed, two plates of glass smearing his emotions into a microscope slide for your inspection.
I have a playlist for this sort of music, called Loose and Losing, full of this kind of beautiful emotional freewheeling. It’s the sort of thing I would listen to on the way to a self-help group for people who feel things too much. Which, for the record, is me.
Born in Guatemala, Hockitay is now based in Montreal. Button concerned with our age of AI, where the sense self feels under threat, sees Hockitay observing, and asking us, ‘The task of living is all consuming, don’t you find that I’ve consumed enough?’