Review Summary: If your fear is what comes first, you'll run from love you deserve
I always have anxiety about first impressions. But I have learned that instead of trying to impress someone when introducing myself, I should speak clearly and slowly, and that will feign confidence for me. I see too many people either worry themselves to death about what everyone thinks of them, or ignore everyone else. I am sure Kara Jackson understands the importance of first impressions, too, because her debut album “Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?” has made a very good impression on me. Not only does she sound confident in singing at a slower and clearer pace, but it strikes me how thematically cohesive, emotionally honest, and beautifully full-sounding it is.
Kara first became known for her poetry collections, written with powerful imagery about topics like black womanhood, racism, and death, and for winning the 2019 National Poet Youth Laureate award. Her music sounds as if it were written by a poet, in pictures painted with words. Often an artist’s debut album shows the world who they are, and also provides a path forward for them. But her prior experience with poetry has already done both of these. This album is just the next step of her artistic identity.
A common topic across the album is relationships: The despair and malaise that others bring us, how they do us wrong, and the myriad of ways they make us sad and pessimistic about the realities of life. She writes with a sharp criticism of people who only have love for themselves, like men who won’t get “therapy”. She calls love “A will to destruct” on “no fun/party”. Kara writes to grieve these realities, these sour relationships, but also to immortalize details of love and belonging, like those found alongside “lily”: “Build a statue up, it outlives us.”
Although her songs are mostly in the context of other people’s lives, Kara writes about her own life with both self-awareness and compassion. A song like “curtains” is stark in examining her own life and career, with an instrumental like a slow-burning anxiety. It’s partially about imposter syndrome (“Am I worthy of applause?”), but also about wondering if success and power in the music industry will corrupt her (“I’m afraid this game we play will kill me if I leave its ways.”) But she has compassion on herself too, like in “no fun/party”, which ends with a list of bad coping mechanisms and a reason to forgo them: “Somebody’s party is missing you, too.”
The question that hangs over the album in the title might be about relationships on the surface, but on the title track it is specifically about death. It refers to the death of Kara’s close friend to cancer. She explores her grieving process and the questions about death that naturally come in that headspace. She remembers that she “trained [her] corneas not to cry, but they will not obey this time”. Then she also rationalizes death coldly by saying “We’re only waiting our turn, call that living”. But as she recalls fond memories with this friend in the outro- hoping to start a band, standing underneath her paintings- the music sounds a little bit lighter. It is a moving tribute and serves as the heart of the album.
If the lyrics are hard to fully appreciate at first, then the arrangements prove just as beautiful and profound. Most of the time, Kara’s fingerpicked guitar, subtle bass, and/or piano are the only instruments supporting her voice– And that is all that is needed to capture one’s attention. Sometimes strings will appear, or drums (both courtesy of fellow Chicagoan NNAMDI), or keys or an organ (courtesy of Sen Morimoto), and reward close listening with textural depth (with help in production and composition from both musicians as well as from KAINA and modern mastering legend Heba Kadry). But Kara is always center stage.
The album’s instrumental changes also mirror the lyrical content in clever ways. In “dickhead blues”, she begins the verse saying “damn the dickhead blues,” with faint strumming and a dropping bass note, which immediately sets a melancholy tone and describes being in the middle of a dead end relationship. When she repeats the line later in the song, this time it’s backed by skittering drums and dramatic keys. The change seems to represent how the relationship has further deteriorated, even before she describes it as “feeling as broke as a bottle of booze”. The instrumentals constantly reflect the way Kara feels in creative ways.
Her control of her voice, as well, makes the relatively slow pace feel mesmerizing instead of sluggish. She shortens her cadence in the verses of “no fun/party” and “rat”, as if she’s just speaking instead of singing key words. She draws out her notes on “brain” to reflect the lyrics about waiting too long for her lover’s brain to come “down from space”, but when she draws out her notes on “lily”, it’s loving and tender. When she sings the title on the title track, her higher register communicates the pain behind the question. And she doesn’t always use vibrato, but it stuns when she does.
This album does a lot with very little at any given moment, plays to Kara’s strengths as a songwriter, and as a result is distinctive among this year’s crop of indie folk. If not paying attention, these songs can pass one by. They are often slow and softly played. But the melodies are memorable, and the arrangements, while gorgeous, don’t steal the show from the thoughtful lyrics. And ultimately, she shows her confidence in her voice and artistic vision instead of opting to grab one’s attention with big moments in order to make a name for herself. Kara has done something great here, and there is no question that she will continue to do great things in the future.
