Singer-songwriter Cattski Espina celebrates love’s highs and lows in her newest album titled, Limerent. After more than a decade, she returns to the scene, using her songs as a deeply personal journey of healing and art. Her fifth record is a celebration of self-love: There are love songs that seize the gentle rush of romance, and there are love songs that guide us back to ourselves.
Quite like never before, Cattski’s eight-track album illuminates the wide spectrum of her emotions. She shared, although sometimes love may not endure forever, it has the ability to lead us back to ourselves — to home.
Creative process
Cattski, a producer for 22 years, reveals the significance of her new album after a 12-year gap. Despite producing music almost every day as part of her job, which at times became tiring, she has now returned to creating her own music.
“I went into some transformation last 2023. I realized I had been denying a lot of things about myself. I had not been accepting my flaws. How could I even begin my journey of self-love if I was so slow in accepting?” Cattski explained.
In mid-2023, Cattski began writing again. It started with one song, and unexpectedly, another followed. While she mostly writes songs and jingles for clients only, she realized that she is finally writing songs as an art form for herself again. Cattski described her album Limerent as a journey of self-love, a conscious effort to return home — not to a place or a person, but to her own self. This theme is most pronounced in the eighth track, “Back 2 U.”
“I have been feeling the sense of coming home to myself. I cut connections, I reduced my circle of friends. I didn’t go out as much. I became less of a people-pleaser (and still working on it),” said Cattski.
Favorites
Cattski shared that “Back 2 U”, “Gemini” and “Tattoos” are three of her favorite songs in the album.
She explained that the song’s title (Back 2 U) was inspired by a special moment when someone noted her upper back pain. Cattski elaborated that while lower back pain can indicate a weak core, upper back pain may specifically point to chest issues. “Emotions and physiology are connected. In yoga, when it’s your upper back (that is aching), where is it connected to? Your chest and what lives in your chest, your heart,” Cattski explained.
Her song, “Tattoos,” is a way to get to know someone with the lyrics “wish I could crawl into your skin with your tattoos.”
“Your tattoos are sort of like a story that will tell who you are on a deeper level. I am fascinated with my own tattoos so I am also fascinated with other people’s tattoos because it tells stories of themselves,” she explained.
Meanwhile, “Gemini” speaks of an astrology-themed love song from a Libra perspective. After researching, she found that Gemini was the most compatible sign with Libra. The lyrics highlight their shared traits but also acknowledge Gemini’s unpredictable nature. Hence, the repeated word “patience” in the lyrics. ”It’s the most hopeful sounding song that I have and most catchy I think. It’s hopeful in a way that ‘Gemini’ is really just a way of saying that whatever is meant for you will never pass you by and maybe one day you will find your Gemini,” she explained.
Cattski’s ability of showing interconnectedness and authenticity to her feelings added a delightful layer to each song’s theme that loving someone means helping them return to themselves as well.
“I realized that if you’re not at home with yourself you can’t be at home with anyone else. You are assigning your identity, your emotions, your issues to someone else and what does this person know? Since the person also has their own issues, it’s like you can’t assign your happiness. It has to be you that will take care of those things,” she said.
Healing
On Feb. 22, 2024, Cattski’s fifth studio album, Limerent, was released on major music streaming platforms. This milestone coincided with her appearance at the Artists Series event on Feb. 28. During the event, she performed several tracks from her album live and catered to several questions of her creative process into making the album.
Cattski’s love songs have always been introspective, but now, Cattski’s Limerent is an art form dedicated to healing which showed her newfound sense of beauty in life.
“My love songs always come from a dark place, so they’re really dark that no one wants to listen to them. In fact, my friends told me to write happier songs. It’s insulting, but oh, I try. However, nothing comes out. This means that I used to come from a place of feeling undeserving or not good enough. But the pace I’m coming from now is that I am deserving,” Cattski explained.
Limerent is an ode to sitting and sorting out our inner issues and Cattski’s message is clear: Even in the throes of love and loss, the journey must always lead back to oneself.