‘Born To Die’ opens Idle No More with irresistible swagger, King Khan swooning over wah-drenched sordid guitars, brazen brass, bass and fuzz.
While Khan might sing, “If all else fails, just leave with a kiss“, this is a record that definitely goes all the way. Things go well beyond a peck across the dozen dripping tracks – by track four our protagonist is already “down on bended knee” with a “ring in his pocket”.
While addressing the longing, loathing and lasciviousness that comes from sordid interactions with various ‘babys’ and ‘darlins’, Khan also lays bear some of the pain he’s endured in the six years since the previous Shrines record.
In one gutting two-year period he lost three close friends and musical associates, finding himself at a crossroads and wondering whether to hang up the microphone himself.
But with this album he addresses and confronts the “darkness in his soul”, emerging out the other side from the “tragedies that made us who we are today / and make us so wild”.
This is scorchin’ soul music played by a hot and humid band and sung through leering lips. As the title suggests, it’s a blisteringly physical response-rearing record, from the mind and pants of the un-restrainable and uninhibited force that is King Khan.
Backed by the sounds unleashed by The Shrines, who have worked with the likes of Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield, King Khan’s Idle No More is guaranteed to leave you in a lather.
