Review Summary: Refreshingly honest and cleverly retrospective, Rainbow makes indoctrination expensive again.
Somewhere between the court protests, anti-Dr.Luke-shirts, and the first time
Lady Gaga ever played feminist demonstrator, the phrase "Free Kesha" stopped merely signifying a wildly successful dance-pop act that cranked out fresh Billboard chart-topping hits, and started becoming shorthand for the way many people across the human rights spectrum thought about the relationship between art and justice.
When an artist reaches the sort of cultural saturation point where the things Kesha represent threaten to overwhelm the music she play, the surest response has been retreat, whether it be a narrowing of scope or a willful abandonment of the pop-palatable sounds that helped draw everyone’s attention in the first place (i.e. the reason why
Katy Perry doesn't have to worry about this deal on her former Witness). Rainbow is certainly no attempt at career suicide, but it is a record deeply informed by the extraneous production of notorious fame. We’re not talking
Michael Jackson level headaches here either, where celebrity’s cruelest misfortune is having scores of girls, but still not being able to pull a supermodel.
Kesha is sitting on top of the world while dealing with death threats and boycotts. Hiding out in plain sight is the only option.
Surely it would have been foolish to make an album that acted like nothing had changed, but you get the sense the girl is actually enormously proud of her iconoclasm, particularly in the opener, “Bastards,” where the singer contrasts her friends’ less worldly lives with her own in a way that’s neither condescending or apologetic. In fact, there’s plenty of defiance to be found throughout, on the already-infamous single “Praying” as well as the less-topical romp “Learn to Let Go,” where Sebert vows “exorcise the demons inside me.”
But that’s the thing with this record-even its scant moments of fun sound desperate. The flippant, nose-thumbing
Kesha of “Boots”, “Godzilla” and “Spaceship” are long gone, replaced by harried, weary woman who seek out the people and places that really matter and then hold on like hell. Sebert takes solace and shelter wherever she can find it, ideally in a loving partner like the one she describes in “Woman” and “Rainbow,” but sometimes a memory must suffice (“Finding You”), or even a might-have-been (“Hymn”). Of course, spiritual faith is tried on for size too, though pop performer can’t help counter-punching with the winkingly-titled “Boogie Feet.”
In context, Rainbow is thoroughly fascinating, but from a strictly sonic perspective it’s hard to fully support Kesha’ latest turn. The pop gloss and progressive sheen of Animal and Warrior was largely killed off by Rainbow’s country makeover, but even those
Shania Twain acoustics were jaunty and spirited compared to the mid-tempo poise of studio album number three. Luckily, Kesha have never sounded so harmonically rich, especially on the gently descending “Hunt You Down" as well as the heart-rending Parton’s-affected “Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You.”
This emotional voice alone is enough to devastate, and she's the reason this album deserves mention among the year’s best. Yet the hope still lingers that when silly controversies finally scatter to the four winds, Kesha can step back into the sunlight, take a deep breath, and return to conquering wide open spaces once again.
