aaamusic | On 18, Sep 2011

Following on from their self-titled debut album in 2009 Kill It Kid have returned in 2011 taking a different direction with a distorted dirty blues album.

Recorded in just 10 days with the band setting out to try and capture a more raw and urgent sound than before. And from the evidence on this album they appear to have succeeded. The album is almost completely stripped of any production to give the gritty and raw sounds they were looking for.

The album plays around the vocals of Chris Turpin and Stephanie Ward which blend very well together to create an atmosphere that can be sultry, emotive, powerful, frankly whatever atmosphere they so choose as what becomes very evident when listening to this album is how versatile their vocals are. When you listen to the interplay of their voices on ‘Sweetness Has a Hold On’. There is a new found vocal ability in Turpin that didn’t appear on their debut with him opening the vocal chords to show that he can sing dark ballads and scream the house down.

Their is also a versatility within the groups musicality going from fast paced blues rock on ‘Run’ to dark and brooding on ‘Dark Hearted Songbird’

As mentioned before the band have taken a new direction in using a more blues based element  to their music particularly that of the deep south of the US and delta blues to give them the raw sucker-punch needed to catapult them out of the speakers. However, throughout the album it is interspersed with various field recordings by Alan Lomax featuring voices talking about the civil rights movement in the US and the struggles in the south. This is presumably used to add to the feeling of the deep south they are trying to create but it still confusing as to why they have done this as none of the songs deal with the topics spoken about by the people on the recordings. It is a purely superficial ploy. So, rather than paying tribute to these people and fighting for their cause it comes across more as someone taking from another culture with little understanding as to what it means to further themselves. This is a kind of arrogance/ignorance that has plagued music for far too long to build a pretence around them. Taking influence from blues music and using it to speak about you’re own experiences is fine and music is fluid and can be transferred across cultural barriers but to take cultural artefacts and use them in such a superficial way simply because you want to sound like you’ve been living in a swamp in Alabama for the last 2 years is ignorant.

It is shame as this is a really good album that has been tainted with this. The Lomax samples add nothing to the album, if anything it lowers it. If you ignore this you will find a powerful, soulful, melodic and melancholic album. A far cry from the debut and shows them developing in to a fine rock band. Just leave the politics and social commentary alone.

 

Author: Barry Gray