Collaboration has always been a crucial element to Kimbra’s creative development.
Even before a certain duet provided her a springboard to stardom, she was already busy crafting what would become her 2011 debut album, Vows; working intimately with producers François Tétaz and M-Phazes, a troupe of guest musicians, and had dallied with Miami Horror and As Tall As Lions.
Not bad for a 24-year-old who is only now gifting the world with her second album, The Golden Echo; a record that the promotional red carpet rolled out as featuring a roster of stars from all corners of the music universe that would obliterate the ‘Gotye’s singer partner’ tag that shadowed Kimbra.
It was a thrilling prospect, but exactly how would one record accommodate an A-list cast featuring members of QOTSA, The Mars Volta, Muse, Dirty Projectors, as well as John Legend, Bilal, arranger Van Dyke Parks, Silverchair’s Daniel Johns, and more? And all without overshadowing The Golden Echo’s Kiwi heroine?
The answer is not a simple one; instead, like the album itself, it’s quite complex and teaches us a lot about the modern state of popular music – that is if you’re willing to take on the frequently cheerful but equally challenging 12-track journey that is Kimbra’s new album at more than just surface value.
Just as the seemingly chaotic ‘90s Music’ quickly deterred listeners unwilling to invest the time to closer study its willingly eccentric sounds, Kimbra’s music can be a tough education, but she does have many great lessons for those willing to be schooled.
Here’s just a few we learnt from the classy Golden Echo curriculum.
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Collaboration Is An Art, Not A Science
‘90s Music’ acted not only as a brilliant audience litmus test ahead of Kimbra’s new release, dividing the disappointed from the thrilled (even as both camps uttered ‘this is her new direction!?’ ) but also as a template for how musical collaboration functions on The Golden Echo as a whole.
A single so crammed with distractions and ideas, so unapologetically post-modern, that it treated blockbuster talents like Matt Bellamy and Mark Foster like bit-part cameos without a thought.
Aside from a sing-off with Bilal on ‘Everlovin’ Ya’, all of The Golden Echo’s many potential leading stars are relegated to playing supporting roles.
Any initial disappointment of the lack of a ‘Somebody That I Used To Know 2.0’ featuring Daniel Johns (who co-wrote several tracks) kind of misses the point.
They’re all there to buttress Kimbra’s ambitious sonic architecture. It’s probably the lesser-known stars that shine all the brighter for it – like Prince’s keyboardist Morris Hayes, production wizards Keefus Green and Taylor Graves, legendary session drummer John ‘JR’ Robinson.
Credit should be given too for the way Kimbra is able to pull each guest out of their element and into her colourful arrangements. Sunny runaway ‘Carolina’, for example, sounds nothing like Michael Shuman’s day job with Queens of the Stone Age, but he was the key to unlocking its rhythmic trot.
There’s another key ingredient to The Golden Echo that best summarises Kimbra’s approach to collaboration, and his nimble fingerprints are all over the record…
Thundercat Is A Bass God
Anyone already familiar with Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner’s virtuosity via his hypnotising live performances, various session work, and genre-fusing solo albums would be crying, ‘hell, we already knew that!’.
But in taking the lion’s share of low-end duties on The Golden Echo, Thundercat’s purring plucks and mercurial runs are given a chance to lap up some mainstream spotlight like he’s never experienced with previous clients.
The unconventional relationship between Thundercat’s bass and Kimbra’s multi-tracked, high-register range is akin to the great ‘70s jazz-fusion pairing of Joni Mitchell and Jaco Pastorius; it’s a connection that’s much deeper than just musical.
In fact, “he’s like a brother now, it’s crazy” Kimbra told Tone Deaf of the duo’s “instant connection,” while singing his praises: “Once I had him play on one song, I was like ‘man, we need you as a colour on everything!’
It’s a good thing she did, he’s a particularly powerful shade in this musical rainbow.
Kimbra May Well Have Invented Trap-Rock (Among Many Other Genres)
Trap-Rock. Go on, Google It. Back? Ok, so ignoring ‘Trap And Roll’ and a single write-up (shout out to L.Kanoniuk), it’s a pretty un-coined term, but it seems like a fitting way to describe ‘90s Music’, as well as the dark rolls of ‘Goldmine’, with its brooding Kanye-worthy production (begging for a guest rap that never materialises).
But trap-rock is also an awkward, inaccurate tag; it puts limitations on tunes that blatantly disregard stylistic boundaries.
Ok, it’s not exactly Kid A – and you suspect sooner or later her career has more daring to come (touted joints with Flying Lotus, UMO’s Ruban Neilson and DP’s Dave Longstreth all ended up on the cutting room floor while another with Omar Rodriguez Lopez is relegated to Bonus Track status).
But at the very least, The Golden Echo will have music critics plucking from the low-hanging tree of hyphenated genre fruit in order to describe it. It’s neo-Rnb! It’s space-funk! It’s symph-jazz-tronica!
There’s nothing wrong with that mish-mash game, especially when confronted with tracks that thrive on the logic of ‘why use a few hooks, when a few hundred will do?’
But getting to the heart of Kimbra’s constructions, even as she gleefully piles on layers and layers to distract the ear from doing so, reveals that at it’s core, these seemingly futuristic sounds aren’t inventions of genre – they’re re-inventions.
Everything’s Been Done, So Do It Different Or Better
One criticism that will likely be fired Kimbra’s way is that she’s merely riffing on old concepts, that her music is simply a recycled version of her very diverse listening habits.
In this argument, ‘Miracle’ will likely become the perfect ‘exhibit A’.
It’s shimmering disco-pop strut instantly recalls everything from pre-Thriller MJ, Prince and Stevie Wonder, through to Olivia Newton John’s ‘Physical’ , ‘Starlight’ one-hit wonder, The Supermen Lovers (just me?), and even Steely Dan, in its a capella breakdown.
Knowing that Daniel Johns played a major part in ‘Miracle’ also makes sense of its vocal melodies and chordal shifts.
But as much as its glitterball hooks – all rubbery bass and synths, guitars and stabbing strings – will have naysayers dismissing it a pastiche attempt to craft 2014’s ‘Get Lucky’, it slavish adherence to genre signifiers is playful and celebratory, not Machiavellian.
It’s the natural evolution of the tips of the hat from Vows but finds Kimbra far less self-conscious about wearing her influences on her sleeve, and it’s all the better for it.
‘Madhouse’ follows a similar template. The very first whipcrack snare screams ‘King of Pop’, and the bursting mix of palm-muted guitar and plastic funk shuffle is the Purple One all over (is that an obscure Chaos And Disorder reference in the lyric?). It’s the single-handed New Jack Swing revival you didn’t know you were longing for. (Just me, again?)
Parts of The Golden Echo might feel like they’ve been ‘done before’, but just as mash-ups allow musical strangers to become bizarrely thrilling bedfellows, so too does Kimbra’s playful toying with a history of pop elements make dizzyingly entertaining configurations from old blueprints.
Albums Are Better Listened To On Headphones
Unless you’re listening to The Golden Echo on a good pair of cans, you’re only hearing half the picture. And if you’re rumbling through its sonic vistas and bass-heavy grooves on a tinny set of laptop speakers, you’re doing your ears a massive disservice.
There’s a rich vein of aural detail that deserves closer inspection. Neat touches like the coda of ‘Nobody But You’, where slapped bass leapfrogs over squelching synths against a kaleidoscope of affected vocal tics. Or ‘Madhouse’s fanning array of backmasked vocals and far off utterances that’d be otherwise utterly lost beneath its knotty textures.
In fact, untangling Kimbra’s busy arrangements is easier on headphones and after a few listens, tracks that seemed incoherent or borderline bizarre (‘Everlovin’ Ya’, ‘90s Music’) begin to reveal themselves as remarkably ordered and inventive. You realise the juxtapositions are more intentional than just a haphazard approach to ear candy.
It’s these micro-details that give you a fuller appreciation of Kimbra’s skills; fascinated in the most minute of sounds, changes, and shifts but also able to get an aerial perspective of how all the pieces fit together into a structured whole. Producer Rich Costey might have wrangled her indulgences in check (just) but Kimbra more than earns her co-production credit.
She can sing (in three octaves) and play, but Kimbra’s real instrument is in arranging – with Pro Tools, samples, cascading multi-tracks – providing the self-sufficient skills to shape her music as much as perform it, much like Prince (a comparison Warner Bros’ chairman has already made).
That auteur approach includes the many segues that are the album’s connective tissue: nostalgic, distant pianos, fuzzy strings, chattering children. Each contextualise the drastic mood swings between tracks and become an essential part of The Golden Echo as an album experience.
Self-Restraint Is Important
Fittingly for a record that shares its title with a flower named after the Greek legend of Narcissus, The Golden Echo’s flaw is that it occasionally suffers from over-indulgence.
Some tracks overstay their welcome (‘Rescue Him’, ‘Waltz Me To The Grave’), and Kimbra’s tendency to overplay means that the intimacy gets squeezed out of moments of reflection, like how the romantic piano-led ‘As You Are’ swells with a web of voices and Van Dyke Parks orchestrations; beautiful but distancing.
But for all her maximalist leanings, Kimbra’s sense of experimentation should be encouraged and applauded because she’s closer to fusing the lines between pop star and artist.
The World Needs Somebody Like Kimbra
The Golden Echo is filled with radio-ready hallmarks – slick production, collaboration, hooks, songs about love, desire, and sheer exuberance – but instead subverts these same trademarks in ways that show how conservative mainstream pop music has become.
It’s no wonder Kimbra became BFF’s with musical contemporary and one-time touring partner Janelle Monaé, they’re both light years ahead of their staid, sexualised peers and share an authoritative flair for crafting albums that play out like dynamic jukeboxes.
This bold multiplicity means Kimbra’s new album is a polarizing experience, a real love it or hate it record, but many of the latter may be converted to the former after taking up the invitation to enter The Golden Echo’s world multiple times. As its title hints, some things can sound even better the second time.
The world hardly needs another pop record, but The Golden Echo – a most rebellious, adventurous, and compelling (anti-)pop record? We could sure use more of those.
The Golden Echo is out now via Warner
