Singer-songwriter and activist Ryan Cassata's new single, “i feel like throwing up”, gets down to brass tacks, stripping away anything that even remotely resembles pretense until all that’s left is naked honesty and aching humanity. The track was produced and performed in collaboration with Mark Pelli of MAGIC.
Penned in the midst of suffocating sickness, Cassata’s voice trembles with both exhaustion and power. Recounting months in which musician friend after musician friend was visiting to cheer him up. The feeling of being penned in and isolated, forlornly reaching out across the void to some higher power or some lost lover creeps into every lyric, but behind that melancholy is a subverbal taunt, an insistence on connection, even in solitude.
Cassata’s songwriting has always balanced openness and rebellion, and here he throws himself into both. “i feel like throwing up” doesn’t just document physical suffering, it reflects the emotional damage of that invisibility and, more broadly, the challenge of being trans in a society all too often unwilling to see you.
Mark Pelli’s production is big, but not bigger than the emotional heft behind it. It's bare-bones, but the dour accompaniment gives plenty of room for Cassata’s voice to poke through, shaky, sincere, and unforgettable.