Review Summary: Kaki King: Stripped.
Kaki King has always presented her albums as a balancing act. Her earliest outings tried to coalesce glaringly mathematical pieces, such as the Youtube favorite “Playing with Pink Noise” from her 2004 sophomore album
Legs to Make Us Longer, with subdued forays into texture driven slow-rock that, while interesting in their own right, made for a rather dreary listen. Thankfully, 2007's
Dreaming of Revenge tore down this austere barrier within her music. By combining the technical flair that got her crowned a “guitar god” by Rolling Stone magazine with the atmospheric layering of her more traditional songs, Kaki King stumbled upon the one thing that she had been missing: continuity.
Junior furthers
Dreaming of Revenge's model of crafting an album around a unified sound, but this time instead of incorporating all the aspects of her past albums into
Junior, Kaki has ditched her occasional fits of Preston Reed-inspired guitar wizardry in favor of a new found simplicity. That's not to say that she has also tossed her knack for making wondrously ornate musical webs out of the most rudimentary of components too, as sprinkled throughout
Junior are lush instrumental passages that would put most post-rock bands to shame, but the heart and soul of Junior is contained in its more straightforward numbers. This streamlined sound gives Kaki the opportunity to put her delicate voice in the spotlight instead of her guitar, and her voice doesn't waste its chance to shine. It glides with eerie ease over the semi-distorted tones that plaster
Junior; a captivating dance of dream-pop seduction that is an oh so welcome star on the stage.
The closing track, “Sunnyside”, puts the whole of
Junior into perspective. A bitter look back at a relationship through the eyes of a jilted lover, it is, for the most part, just Ms. King strumming out a laid back chord progression while her voice acts as a pillar of fire leading the way through a bleak emotional wilderness. Kaki King's new no bull
shit approach has paid off in spades. While
Junior lacks the mystifying guitar work that she built her name on, it is her most visceral and down to earth release to date.
