Album Review: Worcester Magazine
i think this is a truly awesome review of KISS OFF KISS. i hope it enriches your album listening experience. read the review on the worcester magazine site.
Listen Up: Erin McKeown takes deep dive into bad romance with 'Kiss Off Kiss'
With “Kiss Off Kiss,” longtime Massachusetts folk-scene veteran Erin McKeown takes the listener on a deep-dive of shallow affairs, meaningless sex, insecurity, the frost that overtakes a heart when a relationship dies and, perhaps most importantly, holding on to one's sense of self amid the burning car crashes that pass for romance. Cynical? McKeown pretty well signals where she's going with all of this with her opening track, “Cupido Stupido.” The song itself has a cheery, upbeat disposition, a sing-songy sense of innocence that belies lines such as, “I like to think that I am 21st century/too sharp to fall for that ancient mythic (expletive)/how could someone so smart be so suddenly stupid/to think somehow I would reinvent Cupid.”
Indeed, if there's a theme to this album beyond the awfulness of dating, it's the feeling of being a walk-on character in one's own life, an idea that manifests explicitly in “Litany For A Minor Character.” It's a musically discordant piece of work, one that resembles '90s punk rock-infused spoken word more than it does the folk music for which McKeown's known. That said, the sense of aggression and desperation which soaks the song in lines such as, “for all this mess this blessing will you grant us/for all this struggle all this/for someone so brief a narrator/mercy for that minor character,” followed by the refrain of “Lord hear our prayer,” makes for a harrowing emotional experience, one which seems almost at odds with the subsequent, “On/Off Heart.” “On/Off Heart” is a more traditionally structured pop-country song, and in the face of the earlier song's delirium, the thought of a heart which turns off and on to protect itself sounds sort of tragic, a sadness which carries into the more melancholy, “Switch Shadows.”
“Switch Shadows” is a slowly meandering brook of a song, a gentle flow only interrupted by a roll of percussion. “Take my hand and ditch shadows with me," McKeown sings, “now we’re free,” but there's a plaintive quality to the vocals which makes the listener think that's probably not true, a slow-burn feeling that's borne out in the slowly jazzy, “Details of the Crime,” where McKeown sings of evidence, “Evidence of the crime/ripped from the pages of/some cheap detective novels/or from a mini-series mystery of the week/the trail of evidence so evidently obvious/how dare we speak?” The song has a low bass thump that feels like a heartbeat, adding to the its sense of foreboding. There is a criminal at large, after all, and that criminal is love itself.
The album picks up the tempo a bit with the more rock-driven “Go Along/Get Along,” which seems to echo “On/Off Heart” a bit, with its meditation on the coldness that can come with an ending: “In your eyes I could see nothing/bright blue babies used to turn something on/but now it’s gone/you could be anyone/lying on top of me and I’m done.” The fact that the song has a fun, upbeat vibe only helps to put the discord in sharper focus, just as the moodier tone of “The Business of Show” — detailing the first sparks of attraction between the persona and someone in the front row of one off her performances — seems ot denote that, for all the heat, this will not end well. Likewise, the touch of doo-wop in “My Own Baby” contrasts the song's palapable sense of loneliness.
Things really heat up on the album with the bracing, “Is/He Does/His.” Here, McKeown's persona finds herself in danger of losing a paramour to a man: “What’s his skin like?” she sings, “Woes he drink like you?/Does he like-like you/straight and wife-like?/Was I your escape hatch?/am I an itch to scratch?/was I your status catch?/the match so you can burn for someone?” Every line of the song lacerates. The persona is wounded, and lashing out, and the listener feels it on every level, even as the song's blistering blast of rock guitar creates an electrifying hook. The rage cools into something more measured in the title song, 'Kiss Off Kiss,” and it's striking how in the transition between the two songs, the listener can actually feel the frost descend.
Then, with “Landing Spot,” we return to the more dissolute spoken word style of “Litany For A Minor Character,” and while the lyrics seem to convey the persona coming to grips with their own sense of self-value, the foreboding tone of the music makes that assertion suspect. The rage from earlier has cooled, but it clearly hasn't entirely evaporated. When we arrive at the penultimate song, “Today/Sex,” the anger burbles up again, although here it's fueled by that sense of self-worth: “Today I could have been having/sex with you … but it wasn’t worth the price to be your accessory.”
The album ends with the steamy “Little Miss Mister,” a gritty little song. “Hey little sister baby what’s your name?” sings McKeown, her voice low and seductive. “Don’t be afraid pretty mister I won’t tell your friends.” It's an interesting ending, one that seems to bring the listener back to the beginning of an unhealthy cycle. It's the very last lines, though, which give the song some context: “Hey little miss mister what’s got you so down?/whatcha say little mister do you like my album?” Is the album itself a sort of kiss off kiss? Only McKeown could say for certain. The rest of us will just have to enjoy it for what it is.
© 2021 www.worcestermag.com. All rights reserved.