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Okay, any album that opens with the sound of a cat's purr is a-okay with me!!! : )
So, this is the second full-length from my beloved K. And Wow. No, I mean, WOW! She's now joined by Ruth and Matt of The Malarkies, and together, they've taken Karla's amazing songwriting and fleshed everything out, so you've got these mature, lush songs that rival stuff Ida has put out! WOW! Don't get me wrong: I love (love) the lo-fi, kinda hesitant, uncertain earlier stuff, but it sounds like Karla has gotten more confidence in her songs now. I mean, "I Am Not Willing"? With it's harmonica and pedal steel guitar? It's a total countrified classic!
But at the same time, to contrast the more sophisticated tracks, there's also more of just Karla and her piano, which is what I'm a little more partial to. "Keep Your Eyes on the Road" is such a wonderful rambling song, and "None of My Business" is sooo wonderful: it really highlights Karla's beautiful singing voice, and features the erratic, kinda-off songwriting that she excels at. And while the last track on her first album was her demo for "Poor Dumb Bird", an Ida song, this album concludes with Karla re-doing an old Beekeeper song, "Complete", which (incidentally) was always one of my fave Beekeeper songs.
The only song I have a hard time listening to is "Everybody Knows Your Name" which takes the country-route again with some vicious pedal steel from Matt, but also gets annoying repetitively as Karla and Ruth sing the line "everybody knows your name" over and over and over (and over) again. Arghh! (janice.01.03)
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new problems • tiger style records • 2001
Well, it's about time I got around to reviewing these k. cds since I've been loving them so much ever since each one came out! And after seeing her in concert last year, my love for her is stronger than ever!!! The girl, quite simply, rules. As I've mentioned before on this site, Karla is the bass player for Ida (another fave band), and lately, it seems that all my favorite Ida songs happen to be the ones she writes. She adds such an element of quirk and off-kilterness to the traditional song-writing duo of Dan and Liz. So good!
This album features a lot of Karla's piano playing, and I have to say, I just love her fresh I-just-learned-how-to-play-the-piano approach to the songs. I like how they're not technically perfect, and how they're still fabulous.
The album opens with the sparse piano-driven ballad "Not Here" which really lets Karla's gorgeous alto voice take center-stage. "Hip Flask" is, I believe, a left-off song from Ida's Will You Find Me album, and as such, sounds a little more nicely-produced than some of the other stuff here, and also features Liz's pretty soprano voice on back-up. This album also features the gorgeous "Telegram" which is just Karla and her acoustic guitar, Mike thinks it sounds like Movietone. And the lyrics are actually a Sylvia Plath poem! So very cool!
The only bummer about this CD is the song "Fighter Dove" which is pretty cool, and has an awesome groove bass line, thanks to Karla, but also has some less-than-stellar backing vocals. Yowch. When you're so used to hearing Karla backed by Liz, hearing this screechy voice accompanying hers seems even more wrong!
But really, everything about this CD is lovely. One of my fave releases of 2001! (janice.11.02)
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