This is the Kit - Ghost Coat This is the Kit

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.”

Recorded at Rockfield Studios in the Wye Valley, south-east Wales, and the first to be self-produced 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.”

Conversely friendship and community are at the heart of the record, manifesting itself with the voices and contributions of collaborators including Richard Dawson Sam Amidon, guitarist brothers Valentin and Marceau Portron (of Portron Portron Lopez), Ben Howard and Emma Broughton AKA Blumi. 

“I was really keen to not only ask people to sing on the album,” says Stables, “but to make sure that you can hear their individual voices. When you hear the voice of someone that means a lot to you, it can destroy you (in a good way) or can make you feel amazing. It makes me happy hearing all the voices, especially because of the themes of friendship.”

The ghostly garment of the title was inspired by a shadow cast by the staircase in Stables’s new home: the phrase appeared in her head and has been echoing around it ever since, like echolalia. “Ghost coat” could refer to “a layer, a garment, a disguise, a memory” –  a mysterious presence that guides and watches over us, though its intentions are unknown.

This sense of grace is one of the throughlines of the album: finding peace in the way things have turned out, even if it isn’t what we had planned, and accepting the situations we find ourselves in. It all comes back to the concept of home, and in particular the people we call home. “I hope listeners come away with a sense of shared experience,” says Stables. “I’m someone who is prone to disappearing into a sort of burrow, and it’s hard to know how to get out of the burrow. It’s important that we continue to interact with each other. It’s all about feeling a sense of community with other human beings out there.”