Kaki King Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
Four albums in, guitarist and songwriter Kaki King is pulling another switch-up. At 28, she's already assembled a formidable body of work, with each recording sounding different than the last, all the while keeping an instantly identifiable sound. This time out she's working with veteran producer/engineer Malcolm Burn (Chris Whitley, Patti Smith, Lisa Germano, Charlie Sexton, Blue Rodeo, Iggy Pop) behind the boards. King mixes up her attack with seven instrumentals and seven vocal cuts. She plays guitars (including pedal steel), keyboards, and drums, with a small host of collaborators. The sound is warm and full here; there is a sense of detachment that her previous recordings don't have -- which is part Burn's trademark sound that he developed while working with Daniel Lanois and part her increasing familiarity with a recording studio. The instrumental cuts work best, of course, since King's voice is limited in its range, scope, and ability to express the considerable emotional content of her songs. Here too, however, there is improvement, where she doesn't feel the need to project her vocal so far above the instrumental mix. Still, as a lyricist, no matter how direct she gets, there is a sense of clumsiness and lyric-as-afterthought in tracks that have some real weight, like "Life Being What It Is" and "Saving Days in a Frozen Head." The album's final cut, "2 O'Clock," which details the aftermath of a broken relationship, works best because its words, while simple and delicate, carry more weight than the rest of the vocal offerings here. In fact, for all of its skeletal sparseness, it packs a wallop. On the opposite bookend, King's opener, "Bone Chaos in the Castle," is one of the coolest looped-out prog rock guitar tunes in recent memory. Her trademark finger-hammer style of acoustic playing becomes the main part of the rhythm section, while skittering programmed drums and snares, a bassline, and keyboards create the atmosphere as she winds out a simple melody in lead lines that sting despite having the ends rounded off. The mysteriously ambiguous "Sad American" feels more like a demo than a finished tune, but as such, it works. It's almost an interlude to introduce the pumped-up indie rock that is "Pull Me Out Alive." Here she accompanies herself with a staggered vocal line, half a beat behind the front one repeating around her verses. The refrain is a big washy, drifty kind of thing where she gets to the top of her range, guitar lines slip in and out, and drums appear on top of one another -- always a popping snare -- and then just as quickly drop out. "Air and Kilometers" is the most interesting cut here. King uses a digital delay, her acoustic, a steel guitar, and a string quartet to achieve her objective. They paint such an elusive, mercurial backdrop that despite the shimmering appearance of King's layered guitars, it's solid. This is not a remarkable album by any stretch, although its packaging is -- it contains a punch-out mobile as a booklet -- but it is a further step in the development of a singular and ever elusive artist who possesses a truckload of talent, but is still unsure of which direction to head to realize it all. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Having established herself on her debut as an important new acoustic guitar voice, and having expanded the sonic palette on her second to include other instrumentation, Kaki King once again rethinks her approach from the ground up on number three. While there is still deft fingerstyle guitar to spare, more of King's picking is set inside of a greater context -- percussion and light orchestration provide new universes for her to explore, and she revels in the experimental possibilities. Much of Until We Felt Red retains the lighter-than-air feel of the first two albums, Everybody Loves You and Legs to Make Us Longer, but King takes greater care here to fill the spaces with often unanticipated sounds and textures. Both electric guitars and electronics in general, and King's whispery sweet vocal -- itself used more for coloring than to make important lyrical statements -- also take a front-row seat here. But this is neither a singer/songwriter album nor an attempt to use technology for its own sake. Everything King brings to Until We Felt Red, produced by John McEntire, is in service of the composition, and if that means verging on improvisational jazz, or washing a melody in the quasi-baroque, as she does on "You Don't Have to Be Afraid," then so be it. The set-closing "Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers," with its thumped bass and slide guitar, veers toward funk with a touch of Nashville tossed in. But those seeking the imaginative, intricate acoustic playing that characterized King's earlier work need not, well, fret. Every track -- notably "Ahuvati," "First Brain," "Second Brain," and the title track -- is rich with gleaming guitaristry. What's different is that King, whose first notices came when she entertained New York subway riders, can no longer be described simply as a guitarist. From here on, she'll be watched as a complete artist. ~ Jeff Tamarkin, All Music Guide
'Legs to Make Us Longer'
Release Date 9/29/2004
Tracks 11
Label Epic Japan
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Legs to Make Us Longer is extraordinary guitarist Kaki King's second album, and her first for Epic's Red Ink imprint. As such, it reflects its major-label status in higher production values from cover art to exquisite sound. Produced by guitarist David Torn, the album also marks a step from King's solo guitar debut. The stunning yet soulful technique King delivered on Everybody Loves You is everywhere present, from her thumb-over-the-top basslines and tapping harmonics to extended, two-handed melodies. But some other things are here as well -- an upright bass here, a drum kit here, strings in various places -- adding more dimension and texture to King's trademark songwriting for solo guitar. The employment of drums and upright bass on "Ingots" is startling at first, but hardly distracting, as Torn's nuance and tasteful production are never intrusive. The tune is one of the most lyrical in her repertoire and literally sings with its midrange harmonics and colorful chording. On "Doing the Wrong Thing," skittering snares shimmer across the backdrop before engaging in a full-on counterpoint with King in a speedy yet wispy dance through motion and space, before cellist Erik Friedlander and violinist/violist Joyce Hammann slip into the mix at four minutes to take the tune out into the ether. King plays an electric guitar on "Can the Gwot Save Us?," in a loping, pastoral country manner that for all its slowness and elegance is more mysterious than anything else here. The album's final track, "My Insect Life," also showcases her in the company of bass, cello, and drums, and has her singing in a small, twee voice that is all but covered by her overdubbed acoustic and electric guitar playing. But it is very effective as an instrument, faltering its way through the skeletal tune and sending the disc off in a near whisper to excellent effect after a coda following an extended space. Ultimately, this is a step forward. While Legs to Make Us Longer doesn't contain the raw, dynamic immediacy of Everybody Loves You, it substitutes a wealth of diversity, warmth, and textural dimension to more than compensate. King is a major talent, an iconoclastic figure who is this era's only new voice on the acoustic guitar, even as she explores other compelling sonic and musical avenues. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Simply put, Kaki King possesses the most original voice on the acoustic guitar in a generation. Her sound, full of gorgeous tapped melodies and popping basslines, is as deeply emotional as John Fahey's, as technically savvy as Preston Reed's, and as energetic as Leo Kottke's (à la 6- and 12-String Guitar, Greenhouse, and Mudlark). Citing these legendary players is not for the sake of comparison in style or approach, but in metaphor only for she sounds only like herself. King's thumb over the neck and simultaneous double-handed melody line playing is a muscular approach to the instrument to be sure, but in her melodies. harmonic runs and basslines become checkpoints to the musical cosmos; they are complex, indescribable emotional pathways to the heart as well as the mind. There is no "math" in her playing. She goes too far inside the musical labyrinth for that and speaks like a guitarist whose virtuosity lies not only in her technique -- which is truly and literally stunning -- but in her "singing" voice on the instrument. King is a songwriter for the guitar -- and not like Michael Hedges either. This is the music of luminous motion, where trains, planets, and constellations meet at some interstitial point; where earth and sky kiss lustily. For every workout like "Close Your Eyes & You'll Burst Into Flames," where time signatures blur under percussive roils and thumping subharmonies, there are nearly pastoral vistas like "Joi." The manner of counterpoint used in the title track would make most flamenco guitarists jealous for the way it continually moves further into itself and adds body and dimension to the ground of its assertion. The intimate masterwork here is the closer, "Fortuna," where shape-shifting genres and guitar styles weave through and around one another to offer a meditation on love, grace, and the willingness to speak instrumentally and vocally of deeper unspecified truths, secret histories, forceful desires, and chimerical states of being before slipping out the back door with intimate, tender, smart-assed humor. If this seems like an unspecific way to tell about this song, it is; here is music so heartbroken, so gloriously individual and fathomless, one can only venture how knotted the heartworm highways of its origin are. Everybody Loves You is the most auspicious, tender, and tough instrumental debut by any guitarist in a decade at least. It is singular in approach and peerless in execution; and in its poetic, raggedly graceful manner, it is simply a treasure of individuality and idiosyncratic virtuosity, visceral truth, and verve. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
