Crooked Words #12: Photokem, Alela Diane, I'm Kingfisher

Photokem - Tomatoes

Things were passing by me today. I was looking for something to share with you, digging through these odd digital crates of songs and records, waiting for something to reach out. Just at it seemed like nothing was going to do so today, something shifted. Sounds crept it, the light shifted in the room a little. What a thing to happen after all this time.

The breakthrough came here: stumbling upon this new track from Photokem, a quartet from New York who are lining up a new six-song album for release this Friday via Crafted Sounds. The introduction likens it to both ML Buch and Black Country, New Road which somehow makes some kind of sense, but also tells nothing of its finished shape.

The band's new single smuggles something utterly compelling out through its most inconspicuous of titles. I'm not sure a song called 'Tomatoes' has any right to be this good but Photokem prove otherwise. It's a mesmerising eight-minutes, all peculiar tones and a darkly hypnotic atmosphere that rolls on and on and on again.

It's pitched as 'art-pop', but those two short words don't get close to doing it justice. Beginning with drifting piano keys, discordant but subtle swirling noise, it's the kind of song that needs to be properly sat with, to closely watch the layers peeled away and expose the rugged heart of it all deep within the weeds. It's gorgeous, slightly odd, and super fucking cool – and then all flipped around and upside down by a moody spoken-word performance that cuts through the core of things to take it somewhere else once more.

I've never really heard anything like it, which is just about the best compliment I can think to lay upon it today. Regardless, find a space for it, let it carry you off somewhere else entirely.

I'm Kingfisher - Give Up Together

Another track making an entirely unique space for itself is the opening song and lead single from I'm Kingfisher, the long-running project of my Swedish namesake, Thomas Jonsson.

For his sixth album – released in May via the excellent PNKSLM label – Jonsson shifts away from the jazz textures that ran through his previous record, and turns into the wind, pushing foward towards dark and blustery Americana, landing somewhere within the same scorched landscape as Jason Molina and Will Johnson.

Jonsson's slightly strange vocals help carve out this signature place and time, the idiosyncrasies that come from the shapes his voice makes casting the whole thing in a truly captivating type of light. A burst of sunshine just as stormclouds are threatening to erupt.

Over the past decade or so, I'm Kingfisher has shared stages with the likes of Kevin Morby, Courtney Marie Andrews, The Weather Station and Damien Jurado, and his gritty, somewhat skewed songwriting and storytelling certainly fits into those worlds, all while holding onto a special sort of magic of its own, an enchantment of Nordic sensibilities.

Alela Diane - California

For her first album in four years, Alela Diane setup shop in the attic of her 1892 Victorian home in Portland, Oregon and, across 10 days, wrote the record's eleven new songs.

Titled Who's Keeping Time?, the album is set for release in mid-May and is launched with its wonderful opening track 'California' shared alongside some words from Diane, which gently help to build the album's world:

The scene felt kindred to a mouse house: a cozy world built of antique quilts, musical instruments, sound baffles, relics, marigolds, great-grandma’s dolls, old photographs, paintings and brightly colored rugs. Sunshine poured through the skylights as Maggie the cat slept atop the pre-amps and inside guitar cases. We played these songs together in one room: no click tracks, no tricks, and no fuss. This is music from the hearts and breathing bodies of human beings, imperfect as we may be.

Making good on such promises, 'California' is wistful and breezy on its face, brought to life through the chugging nature of the playing, the brightness of Diane's delivery, the charming accompanying whistling.

Critically, however, it keeps a crumb of melancholy close-by that helps the song really land. You can call it a quiet yearning – something the lyrics sing directly to – or maybe its just the passing of time brought to life, our inevitable journey held within a song that drifts out from a human heart and voice, to pass through old windows and into the nearby trees that have watched the world change and change again.

Thank you for being here. Enjoy listening...