Following her politically charged 2004 record "Hidden Vagenda", Kimya Dawson, the other Moldy Peach, releases an album that connects to her three previous ones. She tells stories about friendships, loneliness, her own childhood and live in general, in a fashion that is mostly heartbreaking and warm. For me, listening to a Kimya Dawson record feels like coming home. You realize immediately who the heart of the Moldy Peaches was – Adam Green might have the swooning voice and the looks, but every time I listen to one of his records, I miss something, and I know exactly that that part is Kimya. Kimya does not meet the horrible things of the everyday life with cold irony or detachment. In every song, she expressed that she basically feels all our pain. I realize that this might be the reason why Adam Green is more successful – his music is simpler, and, admittedly, you might not chose to listen to all of Kimya's records on the same afternoon.
"If I'm a spinster for the rest of my life, my arms will keep me warm". Kimya Dawson has a livejournal, which means that everyone can leave comments. I adore this kind of accessibility because I know exactly how vulnerable that makes you. Would Adam Green have a livejournal? No, he would not. Kimya Dawson knows that only those people that really care for her and would never hurt her listen to her music, a luxury her more famous and possibly richer Anti-Folk-Hero-Colleague can not afford. I doubt that Kimya strives for Adam's success, but I find it strange that there are only so very few people take the chance of listening to Kimya Dawson.
In "Loose Lips" "We won't until somebody calls the cops, and even then we'll start again and pretend that nothing ever happened" – a personal song that evolves into a political song, a deeply sympathetic song of all those other people that watch the news and read the papers with an expression of horror and desperation in their face. "And we pray all the day that our shithead president has gone away". The song is adorable because she approaches the topic with the same naivety, a sentiment that Michael Moore would never consider because probably, it is the only one really working. What is wrong about the simplicity of "Fuck George Bush and fuck this war". Absolutely nothing. Kimya never pretends that she is going to give you deep insight into the power structures because just like Michael Moore and any other person using populism to achieve goals, she could not give a detailed picture that even comes close to the complicated structures of politics. That's what leftist political scientists are for, and even they can not know everything. Kimya Dawson's job, on the other hand, is to reveal how much she feels like every single one of us. She is just as angry, and the kind of protest she keeps up in this beautiful song is that of persistent protest on a small scale.
This might be her best record so far because it is more complicated musically, probably even more upbeat "I am not your saviour", she says, and she is very right because no musician is your saviour.
The charming thing about Kimya Dawson is that she does not even try to keep her personal life out of her songs because she knows that she could never achieve that – rather than turning her songs into pathetic ballads with lots of metaphors and the pretence of fiction, she uses "I" and tells us stories about her family.
It is still mainly guitar, but other instruments join in, of course not in the orchestral ways of recent Adam Green records. This stays true to the idea of Anti-Folk and Lo-Fi music, to DIY. I love Kimya Dawson for all these things. "I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything" ("I Like Giants"). Despite all the horrible things, she seems to feel better than two years ago. Her agenda is simply to make other people feel better, and that is so much more than other artists can claim for themselves, and it is an achievable goal. In "The Competition" she talks about all these things, about being able to say things that are important to other people. It is as simple as that. In "12/26", she sings about the flood that hit South-East Asia in 2004.
And in the final song, you might be able to hear the entire Anti-Folk family joining in. I feel like home.
"If I'm a spinster for the rest of my life, my arms will keep me warm". Kimya Dawson has a livejournal, which means that everyone can leave comments. I adore this kind of accessibility because I know exactly how vulnerable that makes you. Would Adam Green have a livejournal? No, he would not. Kimya Dawson knows that only those people that really care for her and would never hurt her listen to her music, a luxury her more famous and possibly richer Anti-Folk-Hero-Colleague can not afford. I doubt that Kimya strives for Adam's success, but I find it strange that there are only so very few people take the chance of listening to Kimya Dawson.
In "Loose Lips" "We won't until somebody calls the cops, and even then we'll start again and pretend that nothing ever happened" – a personal song that evolves into a political song, a deeply sympathetic song of all those other people that watch the news and read the papers with an expression of horror and desperation in their face. "And we pray all the day that our shithead president has gone away". The song is adorable because she approaches the topic with the same naivety, a sentiment that Michael Moore would never consider because probably, it is the only one really working. What is wrong about the simplicity of "Fuck George Bush and fuck this war". Absolutely nothing. Kimya never pretends that she is going to give you deep insight into the power structures because just like Michael Moore and any other person using populism to achieve goals, she could not give a detailed picture that even comes close to the complicated structures of politics. That's what leftist political scientists are for, and even they can not know everything. Kimya Dawson's job, on the other hand, is to reveal how much she feels like every single one of us. She is just as angry, and the kind of protest she keeps up in this beautiful song is that of persistent protest on a small scale.
This might be her best record so far because it is more complicated musically, probably even more upbeat "I am not your saviour", she says, and she is very right because no musician is your saviour.
The charming thing about Kimya Dawson is that she does not even try to keep her personal life out of her songs because she knows that she could never achieve that – rather than turning her songs into pathetic ballads with lots of metaphors and the pretence of fiction, she uses "I" and tells us stories about her family.
It is still mainly guitar, but other instruments join in, of course not in the orchestral ways of recent Adam Green records. This stays true to the idea of Anti-Folk and Lo-Fi music, to DIY. I love Kimya Dawson for all these things. "I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything" ("I Like Giants"). Despite all the horrible things, she seems to feel better than two years ago. Her agenda is simply to make other people feel better, and that is so much more than other artists can claim for themselves, and it is an achievable goal. In "The Competition" she talks about all these things, about being able to say things that are important to other people. It is as simple as that. In "12/26", she sings about the flood that hit South-East Asia in 2004.
And in the final song, you might be able to hear the entire Anti-Folk family joining in. I feel like home.
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