Wary + Strange

Amythyst Kiah

Released on 18/06/2021 by Rounder
Main artists: Amythyst Kiah
Genre: Alternative & Indie

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The second full-length album from Tennessee native Amythyst Kiah opens with a pretty clear, tone-setting statement: "Don't wanna hear your soapbox speech … You can keep your sophistry/ Save my brain from atrophy/ I have my own hand that feeds," she huskily declares on "Soapbox." The song inevitably reminds you of Tracey Chapman—so does "Firewater," its melody as delicate as a flowing creek—as well as Tori Amos and Brittany Howard's solo work: women who effortlessly exude both power and tenderness. Kiah knows how to wield music like a paintbrush or, perhaps, virtual reality. "Hangover Blues" sounds like the rattling noise and low-down heavy fog that pervades your head after a night of too much everything, its nagging guitar a sharp shooting pain. The effect is hypnotizing. "Opaque," which has a Lauryn Hill feel to it, is about finding out someone you love isn't who you first saw them as. Kiah wields instrumentation as clever punctuation: "Your veneer of perfect grace/ Was just a mouse's masquerade … Just like that"—dum dum dum—"she washed away." It's like the moment in a mystery novel when the surprise villain is unveiled. Lovely and bittersweet "Wild Turkey" opens so quietly then swells with a rising tide of emotion. The track is about Kiah's mother, who drowned in the Tennessee River when the singer was 17, and it's like audibly working through the stages of grief. She offers up precise introspection on the gorgeous country heartbreaker "Ballad of Lost," about spotting a lover with another woman. As pedal steel sighs and Amy Ray (Indigo Girls) harmonizes, Kiah weighs the truth: "I believe that I can forgive/ Can I forget?/ Never." There's also intensely personal reckoning of her relationship with alcohol, on "Wild Turkey" and "Hangover Blues," but also the haunting "Tender Organs," which ponders the wisdom of using it as a numbing agent. The stark blues shift to an uneasy breakdown that cracks into an insistent guitar wail, and you feel the emotion behind her realization: "The hands that healed me/ Now they're rotten." Producer Tony Berg, who has a history of working with smart singer-songwriters (Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Edie Brickell, Phoebe Bridgers) knows how to add light to the shade, relying on the bullfrog croaks of a bass harmonica to buoy the country-blues lament "Fancy Drones (Fracture Me)" and its warning against finding purpose in workaholism. And Kiah revives her protest song "Black Myself"—previously recorded with the trad-folk supergroup Our Native Daughters, including Rhiannon Giddens— by reinforcing the old-time string version with stomping blues rock that matches the ugliness of quieter racism: "I pick the banjo up and they sneer at me/ 'Cause I'm black myself/ You better lock your doors when I walk by/ 'Cause I'm black myself/ You look me in my eyes but you don't see me/ 'Cause I'm black myself." It is, literally, devastatingly beautiful. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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Wary + Strange

Amythyst Kiah

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