Pros: Confident, assured delivery of socio-sexual songs that simmer with the passion of informed individuality.
Cons: Perhaps too many spoken-word tracks--but only four, and even those are great.
The Bottom Line: On her stellar debut album Tidy, Kinnie Starr establishes herself as a grrrl who just loves to start a riot with a collection of 11 awesome tunes. Check it out.
I'm one of those music fans who is devoutly loyal to the artists that I follow. I'm not one of those casual music fans who just picks up the "popular" record by a certain artist only to lose track of their careers long after the buzz from their "breakthrough record" has subsided. (I don't know how many times I've heard people say, "Wow, the Indigo Girls are still putting records out? I haven't picked up anything of theirs since the "Closer to Fine" record." To that I say: "Blah blah f#cking blah, Top 40 scum!") When I connect to the music of someone (and I mean really connect), I make sure that I know when their next album is coming out so that I can continue my relationship with them.
Having been recently turned on to the music of Vancouver recording artist Kinnie Starr via her insatiably good new album Sun Again, I decided to dip into her back catalog so that I could check out some of her older material. I clicked on over to Amazon, and immediately found a copy of her 1996 major label (Mercury) debut, Tidy, for only $1.37, and promptly hit my "1-Click Buy Now" button to complete the sale. The disc arrived in the mail today (hey, that was fast!), and right after opening the package, I went right to my stereo, put it in, and hit play.
In a word: Wow. Not that Tidy is the greatest record I've ever heard or anything. It's good (in fact, it's damn good), but what I found to be most striking of all is how different Starr's new record is from her older material. To listen to both Tidy and Sun Again is to listen to what sounds like records by two completely disparate artists. The records are that different.
Whereas Sun Again evokes the mellow-hazy-sexy vibe of electronica/trip-hop acts like Goldfrapp and Morcheeba, Tidy shows Starr is full-throttle PJ Harvey mode, growling songs about love, heartbreak, bisexuality, menstrual cycles(!), and personal identity that rip from the speakers with an aggressive femininity that rivals the histrionics of not only Harvey, but past and present luminaries like Janis Joplin, Courtney Love, Ani DiFranco and Tracy Bonham. This is a funky rock record, the kind that comes complete with lots of drums and electric guitar riffs that blast forth with a fury to match that of the anger in Starr's voice. It's not quite what you'd call incendiary (thought it sure does come close), but it sure is hot to listen to just the same.
The disc gets off to a strong start with "Grandma's Bicycle," an account of an encounter with a man who informs Starr that he is "through with this whole damn world and its overwhelming bad taste" before "float{ing} up above the cloud line." The slow sexy groove of track two, "Ophelia," informs the song's tale of sexual devotion ("So I wish to be led to your bed/I wish upon your charms, I need to be fed/I wish to be outspread for you/I wish to give you my bread so red") that seductively weaves imagery of menstruation with Shakespearian drama. "Stiff Sour Lemon Rind" is one of those "I'm done with you" songs that inspires self-righteous glee ("One: I can't stand the way you think I'm nowhere/Two: I can't stand the way you think you're somewhere/Three: I can't stand your arrogant glare/That you give me for no reason except you think you're up there") at every listen, while the equally affecting "Leons" uses distaff melody and screeching guitars to convey Starr's devotion to her "small ocean of friends."
"Um...Ah..." is a rather interesting instrumental piece, a musical interlude of sorts that sets the tone for the next tune, "Spring Again," a beautifully evocative song on which Starr wishes for the change of seasons to bring her some much-needed perspective on life ("I want lakes to swim in/'Cuz I'm so tired of waiting/I'm so tired of waiting/On the warmth of serenity to engulf me"). Things get really funky on the hippity-hoppity "Rime Gone Wrong," which finds Starr lambasting the "white pop trash" of consumer culture ("'Cuz malls are for the needy, for the bored/For the greedy/For the comfort that comes/In gloves supplied by something/Seedy! Seedy! Seedy! Seedy!") with all the inspired anger of a true activist and the funkadelic musical finesse of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in their Blood. Sugar. Sex. Magik hey-day.
The last several songs represent a "cycle" of sorts dealing with Starr's emboldened sexuality: The memorable "Woven" is a girl-on-girl love song that comes off as a head-bangin' rockabilly metal ballad(!) which feeds Starr's vocals through a Vocoder unit to rip-roaring results, while "Month of Trickery" finds Starr celebrating her love of men and friendship on a spirited spoken-word piece that gives a hint of the trip-hop that would soon follow on Sun Again. Fully in tune with her sexuality, Starr un-self-consciously utters the words "Had me a boy/Man with a keen mind and he spun me like a sweet chocolate treat and I was wrapped around his candystick" before following that up with "Simple," another spoken-word stunner that evokes the Garden of Eden with its tale of sexual longing in a field of daisies. The four-song cycle comes to a fiery finish with "Praise!," an ode to bisexuality (dedicated to her mother, no less!) that includes the blush-inducing chant "Boy tongue to boy tongue is sexy and you know it/And girl lips on girl hips fits perfect and we show it/And I have eyes I know that boy and girl fits too/We lay together make a mess and then we share love juice"." Chanting many of the lyrics in French and declaring her devotion to the Indian Mother Goddess Kali, Starr leads the listener through a pansexual journey of faith, courage, individuality and sexual freedom that is as much a celebration of life as it is a personal manifesto of sexual and spiritual liberation.
The disc comes to a powerful close with the bonus track (which I'll call "Safe Cover" for lack of a proper title), yet another spoken-word treasure that would fit perfectly within the canon of some of Ani DiFranco's more overtly feminist material ("I wanna feel the freedom to be sexy/Without his eyes sliding all up and into me").
The production (Starr produces herself with few exceptions) is impeccable, giving the disc a grunge-worthy shot of "noiz" while ensuring that Starr's vocals come through as clearly as possible. Thankfully, the record doesn't sound too polished; there's a strong sense of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethics at play here--perhaps too much so, as Starr was dropped from Mercury's roster after delivering her unreleased follow-up Mending. But what really buoys the disc is Starr's confident delivery of her own unique compositions. Completely free from the constraints of society's values, the multi-talented artist (the liner notes include several of Starr's vibrant paintings) delivers the kind of spirited and potent music that could ignite a revolution--if only people knew who she was!
In short, you can bet I'll be a Kinnie Starr fan for years to come!
GRADE: A-
To order a copy of this record (at a very cheap price), check out this link to Amazon.com:
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