Available at Amazon Japan
| Kahimi Karie - It's Here |
| Looking
back at Kahimi Karie's now nineteen year career is an exercise in both
consistency and unpredictability. Consistent because, though it all,
she never stopped singing at a whisper, even when the music retained a
core of unassuming intellectualism, and seemed to belong to
several cultures (England, France, Japan) while never quite belonging
to any of them. Unpredictable because she took that core and ran it
through a bewildering array of left turns that embraced traditionalism,
the avant-garde, Momus inspired hedonism, somnambulistic introversion,
dance pop, freaking, dreamlike cut ups, and who knows what else. The
consistency never got boring, and the shape shifting never obscured who
was in charge: she's managed to form one of the most instantly
recognizable sounds in modern music, even when stretching that sound to
unimaginable extremes. It's therefore both cause for celebration and concern that her latest album, It's Here, seems like a more user friendly take on her last album, 2006's excellent if occasionally impenetrable Nunki (2007's Specialothers was a compilation.) A similarly gentle, hushed air hangs over the proceedings, but never quite gets as abstract as Nunki's more spaced out moments. It's Here is unselfconsciously warm where Nunki was blissfully fragmented, welcoming where the other was wrapped tight in its warm cocoon. It's easier to get into, but conversely more difficult to get completely lost in. Whether or not that last point is a problem is up to the individual listener; Nunki was beautiful, but it often wasn't easy. In contrast, It's Here is much more direct, replacing obscurity with accessibility. It sacrifices some distinctiveness between the individual tracks as a result, but it's difficult to consider that a criticism when the sound is as smoothly intriguing as this. "The Silence In A Storm" takes a boatload of percussion and keeps it together with sharper, more focused songwriting. Album centerpiece "All" starts at a hush and swells gradually into a modest but nonetheless lushly gorgeous sonic tapestry. "Nouveau Paradis" similarly flirts with a quiet tension that walks the line between mysterious and sunny, building into a tight, understated climax. "Monkey & Me" is musically direct enough to bring her early, more explicitly pop work to mind with it's samba beat, psychedelic funk guitar, and kitchen sink arrangement, yet remains intriguingly vague in terms of actual structure: it sounds like a particularly lucid stream of consciousness. Karie's typically gone deeper where other artists go wider, finding endless and often surprising variations within her highly individual headspace. It's Here is the first album since 1998's K.K.K.K.K. that never at any point spins off into the abstracted ether, like the REM-state head trip of Trapeziste's "Sleep," or "Camelia's" blissful disintegration on Nunki. This tightening of the reins results in a more immediately satisfying package, but one that necessarily comes off as much less exploratory and envelope pushing. It's Here is gorgeous, but it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know, suggesting that Karie's next step is crucial. Will she settle into a beautiful, gently psychedelic haze? Or is this the slight creative breather before veering off into yet more uncharted waters? |