Kaki King: Everybody Loves
You
Velour VEL-0302 CD
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 My friend Paul has
a theory that we are currently in the midst of an explosion of guitar talent matched only
by the flurry of almost godlike pianists that crested in the early part of the 20th
century. He says that, just as every parlor held a piano back then, almost every household
has a guitar sitting around today -- and now it's just a matter of percentages.
It is a persuasive argument, and it doesn't just hold in
the classical world either, as 23-year-old Kaki King perfectly illustrates. She plays
acoustic guitar, but she doesn't play folksy, "girly" music -- she attacks her
instrument with both hands, hammering on percussive, aggressive melodies, frequently in
non-standard tunings.
Does this sound weird? Well, no -- it doesn't. Unless
you're a guitarist, you probably aren't aware of standard and non-standard tunings. Keith
Richards frequently tunes his guitar down from the "standard" E-A-D-G-B-E to the
"non-standard" D-G-D-G-B-D ("Honky Tonk Women" is in this open G
tuning) and that doesn't sound weird, now does it?
Actually Ms. King's sound is open, ringing, and ethereal --
until she digs in with both hands and starts tapping out those percussive melodies. Heck,
she even pounds on the instrument itself, turning it into a surprisingly melodic drum.
("Banging on the guitar just makes sense to me," she told Guitar Player.
"You have this resonant box that sounds cool when you smack it, so why not go for
it?")
Everybody Loves You is Ms. King's first record. It
was recorded song by song in various studios around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island
as she grabbed available time when it presented itself. The recording isn't
"audiophile-quality," but it is warm and detailed and pretty in-yer-face
close-up. Since Ms. King's preferred guitars are an Ovation Adamas and a Taylor 710, she
doesn't go for that mellow Martin sound. In fact, when using the Ovation, she likes to mix
in a healthy dose of piezo pickup sound, which accounts for the woodiness of her tone on
those tracks. On one track, "The Exhibition," she uses nothing but the pickup,
which routes alternating strings to the different channels for a most disorienting sound.
Purist? No, she is definitely not a purist, as even
a cursory audition will clearly reveal, but her ears are very good and so is the
sound throughout ELY. Her preferred microphones are a pair of Neumann U87s and this
also gives the disc far more coherence than its all-over-the-map recording schedule would
normally produce.
But let's not get bogged down in recording minutia. What
makes this record worth hearing is Ms. King's giant-sized talent. She has a special way
with a bass line -- she weaves them into her intricately complex melodic structures so
they sound more like interlocking components of devious duets than the work of a single
player. She also has tremendous rhythmic momentum and her songs just rollick along,
raucously generating their own energy, the way ice slides along on its own melting.
In other words, she rocks!
I strongly urge you to check out Kaki King's Everybody
Love You. It will make you feel very good -- unless you're a guitarist, that is.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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