Kesha - Rainbow
Tiny Mix Tapes 80
Kesha
Rainbow
[RCA; 2017]
Rating: 4/5
“If there’s a God or whatever, something, somewhere, why have I been abandoned by everyone and everything I’ve ever known, I’ve ever loved? Stranded, what is the lesson? What is the point? God, give me a sign or I have to give up. I can’t do this anymore. Please just let me die. Being alive hurts too much.”
What ever? Spiritual paths can be roughly divided into the transcendent and the immanent. The transcendent path proposes that the conditions of the lived world — sex, money, work, our bodies, every aspect of daily Being — need to be transcended for something separate, higher, more true, more pure, more real. The immanent path, more congenial to modern-day Western spiritual practitioners, sees the Divine in all of these things. There is no profane, and impure energies are to be used as fuel for the journey. As Kesha puts it, “I know that I’m perfect, even though I’m fucked up.”
Her comeback album, after the abuse and mire she’s been dragged through, is both Kesha’s rainbow bridge to transcendence and a proud declaration that although the immanent may be scarred, she refuses to see it as marred — right here is where pleasure is to be found. “Defiant” may be a term too often misused in an age of empowerment feminism, but it’s absolutely fitting for this album.
Transcendence achieved, then, is the “what.” God doesn’t exist in a hymnless world — or at least not as a separate entity — but can yet be called upon. “Praying” is a gospel number overcoming personal demons and wishing well to the abuser, while “Hymn” transmutes a community of “sinners,” of “kids with no religion,” into a congregation. Even the cover art has something of the Tantric in its mystic symbolism and its erotics.
Rainbow is also a transmutation of Kesha’s own persona — the dollar sign now revealed for the profanity it always was. We began to see this Kesha, a lady of sorrow and of joy, on the gorgeous, show-stopping, melancholy “It Ain’t Me Babe” at the Billboard Music Awards — 2016’s song most likely to make you weep. But in the days of “Tik Tok” Kesha, along with Rihanna and less-remembered figures like Kiely Williams, had been the flagbearer of a particular genre of self-objectifying female-fronted pop, the contemporary counterpart to perennial male pop creeperness. Kesha-with-a-dollar-sign seemed like a joke, and a pernicious one at that (we didn’t know that, behind the scenes, the objectification was utterly real, and Dr Luke was laughing all the way to the bank). It was a self-abasement, a female chauvinist piggery. But on Rainbow Kesha’s telling us she’s seen the light. And we should all yell back “Hallelujah!” as loud as we motherfuckin’ can.
What, or who, are we praising? In the New Age, self-affirmation takes the place of God — a spiritual narcissism, the icon as selfie (there’s a reason why “icon” refers to both the religious image and the celebrity). To ask whether that’s happening here, though, seems churlish (as does giving the album a score at all): it isn’t quite the point, because there’s something more important going on. As Taylor Swift’s court case shows (as if we hadn’t just finished hearing about The Runaways), celebrity is no shield from abuse.
But, if we who will not judge lest we be judged judge yet, we can say: Kesha’s pop chops are sharp and true. For the most part, the pop songs work better than the mid-tempo numbers. They’re more spirited, but less moving. “Praying,” for example, is better as catharsis than as an earworm, but it’s no less powerful for that.
The country influence shines in Kesha’s voice when unadorned on tracks like gauntlet-throwing opener “Bastard” and rollicking highlight “Hunt You Down.” Dolly Parton guests — on country classic “Old Flames (Can’t Hold A Candle to You),” written by Kesha’s mother in a double tribute to the power of the maternal lineage — to greater effect than the Eagles of Death Metal, though “Boogie Feet” is hella catchy. “Woman” roars louder than Katy Perry.
On an album like Rainbow, the ramshackle, squee-inducing kawaii of “Godzilla” doesn’t seem any more out of place than the unnamed kaiju in Nacho Vigalondo’s “Colossal” — which seems an appropriate parallel in its tale of abuse, of unbearable real monsters and adorable fantasy monsters and the way in which, somewhere between the two, we do the messy work of recuperation.
And then, on “Spaceship,” to the earthy sound of banjos, we transcend with Kesha, beyond death, beyond earthly hurt, knowing our bodies as stardust, experiencing freedom. The occupants of the interplanetary craft have been called, and they are observing her rebirth… baby.
The Guardian 80
Kesha’s third album cannot help but be about her troubled relationship with her former producer, but it is also a fierce, skilful rebellion against manufactured pop
The final chapter of music critic Simon Reynolds’ exemplary history of glam rock, Shock and Awe, concentrates on the genre’s influence between punk and the present day. One figure it unexpectedly alights on is Kesha Sebert, then known as Ke$ha: in her early, multiplatinum singles Tik Tok and We R Who We R he detects traces of everything from Suzi Quatro’s trash-talking androgyny to the screw-you triumphalism of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. As it turned out, Sebert may have had more in common with another glam act, the Runaways, the Californian all-girl quintet whose bassist, Jackie Fox, alleged that she had been raped by their svengali-like manager, Kim Fowley. In October 2014, Sebert sued producer and songwriter Dr Luke [Lukasz Gottwald] for alleged sexual and emotional abuse: the most horrifying of her allegations were that he had plied her with drugs and raped her. Dr Luke countersued, denying the allegations and claiming that she was smearing his reputation in order to escape her recording contract. The legal battle is ongoing, but Reynolds has suggested that, despite a wave of public support, her allegations have left Sebert’s work “forever stained”: it’s hard to listen to gleeful screw-you triumphalism when you’ve been told the artist who made it wasn’t gleeful, but brutalised and demeaned in the process.
Related: Kesha returns: ‘Rainbow is truly from the inside of my guts’
Continue reading... Thu Aug 10 14:00:31 GMT 2017Pitchfork 68
Kesha’s musical career has been defined by her work with Dr. Luke. On her third album, she begins something new and promising.
Fri Aug 11 05:00:00 GMT 2017The Guardian 60
(Kemosabe/RCA)
After years of legal wrangles, the former purveyor of pop fodder delivers a strong third album that deserves to be a hit
Anyone wanting to sing outside the privacy of their own shower ought to be handed a tablet rammed with memoirs and biopics, featuring the cautionary tales of Tina Turner (abusive partner), Ronnie Spector (ditto), Britney Spears (mental health issues), Mariah Carey (controlling partner), Amy Winehouse (drugs), and now, Kesha Sebert (case ongoing). They should familiarise themselves with the business debacles of Prince (label woes), Leonard Cohen (thieving associate), the Stone Roses (contractual nightmares) and Brian Wilson (abusive therapist) and seriously reconsider small animal veterinary practice.
If poetic justice exists, Kesha’s Rainbow, her third album, would be a world-beating hit. It would be proof that people really want to listen to the authentic feelings of women – Kesha’s killer comeback song, Praying, say – rather than lubricious fantasias of catchy party pop. You might remember the bratty Tik Tok, or (cough) Your Love Is My Drug, or any of Kesha’s trashy chart-fodder under the aegis of Lukasz “Dr Luke” Gottwald, the producer who directed Sebert’s early success before a flurry of lawsuits – alleging rape, drugging and more – started flying.
We’re really here for the empowerment narrative – to hear pop cannon-fodder firing back
Related: Kesha returns: ‘Rainbow is truly from the inside of my guts’
Continue reading... Sun Aug 13 08:00:08 GMT 2017Drowned In Sound 60
As our march toward the world’s end builds to a canter, the narratives we wrap around human tragedies both great and small remain the same: resurrection, hope not hate, the phoenix rising from the ashes. After Eagles of Death Metal survived the terrorist attack that interrupted their 2015 Bataclan show in Paris, the appropriate responses began flooding in, spearheaded by (a) a collection of largely ersatz covers of ‘I Love You All The Time’, and (b) the usual well-meaning platitudes about hope and fear. Frontman Jesse Hughes didn’t get the memo. 'I know people will disagree with me,' he told The Guardian a few months later, 'but it just seems like God made men and women, and that night guns made them equal.' Suddenly, it appeared the protagonists had their own complex moral code, one that didn’t necessarily fit with the scripted liberal response. The phoenix proved as unmanageable as the ashes.
Equally, it seemed unlikely to some that the artist behind ‘Tik Tok’ would emerge, seven years later, as an important voice in the fight against physical and emotional abuse, as well as the wider misogyny that accommodates it. After years of protracted legal battles against producer Lukasz 'Dr. Luke' Gottwald, Kesha was not prepared to be buried by his influence or the record label’s control. Five years on from 2012’s Warrior, she returns with Rainbow - her resurrection, her phoenix. How do we divorce the album from its context, if such a thing is even desirable? We can’t, of course. But we can talk about how she’s chosen to present it.
The temptation must have been strong for Kesha to use her previous collaboration with The Flaming Lips as an entry point for achieving artistic credibility, dropping the decadent-chick pop bangers for an imagined rock adulthood. Opening track ‘Bastards’ certainly hints in that direction, beginning as a bright country salute to the power of the middle finger, before erupting into a slightly queasy ‘Hey Jude’-style anthem. The lyrics are rebellious in an Avril Lavigne sort of way, littered with platitudes so generic they may have been more appropriately rendered in emoji form, or on a motivational poster ("People gonna talk shit", "Don’t let the bastards get you down", "I’ll just keep on living the way I wanna live", etc.) Let’s get the bad news out of the way: with a few thematic and metaphorical tweaks, and some exceptions, this is pretty much how it goes on for the rest of the record.
Musically, however, it proves to be a red herring. While there are a handful of hashtag-authentic moments across Rainbow’s 14 tracks, the rest are stashed right at the back of the record – the sadly disposable Dolly Parton duet of ‘Old Flames (Can’t Hold A Candle To You)’; a goofy acoustic number called ‘Godzilla’; and ‘Spaceship’, the closest thing here to a nod to The Flaming Lips. In between, we get something somehow more surprising at its core: a Kesha record, not that different to her last outing, but delivered on her own terms. It’s also, as it goes, a pretty good Kesha record.
That’s not to say that there aren’t external influences scattered everywhere, but for the most part, she wears them well. ‘Let ‘Em Talk’ and ‘Boogie Feet’ both occasionally feel like a friend waving a powdered house key at you at 5am; their hyper-energetic pop-punk is not entirely unwelcome, but perhaps ill-advised. At the other end of the spectrum, the album’s first big, emotional numbers – and you know they’ve been coming – are ‘Hymn’ and ‘Praying’, sequenced back to back in a double-whammy of vaguely religious-themed songs about, you know, redemption and shit. The former is intended as a rallying cry to the world’s disaffected outsiders (i.e. pretty much everyone) – a Lorde pastiche, if I'm really being unkind.
The latter is a much stronger affair, and if it sounds like a Jack Antonoff-penned Sam Smith number, that’s because Antonoff absolutely nails this kind of thing; presumably her songwriting team of Ryan Lewis, Ben Abraham, and Andrew Joslyn have been taking notes. ‘Praying’ also deserves credit for sending shivers up the spine on multiple occasions; the musical development is perfectly executed, and when the drums and choir kick in, and later the horns, it takes a stoney heart not to swell alongside them. It’s also one of the few moments where the lyrics really hit home, too. Despite being dressed up as a break-up number, it’s the song that appears to be most obviously written with Dr Luke in mind, and it’s the little jabs that prove irresistible – hinting that “we both know all the truths I could tell” is one thing, but the promise that “when I’m finished, they won’t even know your name” is an absolute KO.
‘Learn To Let Go’ is the affirmative pop belter here, and even the unsavoury hint of a Jamaican patois can’t ruin the barnstorming chorus. After repeated listens, it transpires to be the album in microcosm: imperfect and dripping in cliché, but ultimately warm, pleasurable, and delivered with enough sincerity that the artist’s honesty shines through the boardroom aphorisms about holding on and being your best self. She’s worked out how to do that on Rainbow anyway, and your enjoyment of the results will inevitably hinge on how much you were likely to enjoy a Kesha album five or seven years ago as much as today.
Besides, maybe it’s for the best that these narratives don’t always get the autocue martyrs we crave. I don’t agree with Jesse Hughes’ views on guns, but I wonder if the world is a better or worse place for making people think about why some think that way. Equally, if Kesha – or rather, Ke$ha, the woman once held up as an avatar for the disposability of modern pop music, a millennial brat who supposedly sang about nothing but partying and brushing her teeth with Jack Daniel’s – felt like an uncomfortable fit for a story about surviving abuse, then maybe that’s because we’re part of the problem. Kesha Rose Sebert – “perfect, even though I’m fucked up” – isn’t the hero we asked for, nor the phoenix who rises immaculate from the dirty ashes of modern trauma. The record isn't perfect either, though it's enjoyable in places. But she is a survivor. Theirs are the voices we must hear.
Fri Aug 11 08:46:42 GMT 2017