Kaki King goes by one rule: no jiggery-pokery.
Borrowed from her producer Malcolm Burn, the phrase roughly translates into “no bullshit” — a philosophy King has taken on and off the road in support of her latest album, Junior.
“Malcolm likes to have some manifesto when he makes a record,” King says by phone from a tour stop in Northampton, Mass. “His mission statement this time around was just make a record, not worry too much and just record.”
Junior is Kaki King’s fifth album, but it isn’t the first time King (born Katherine Elizabeth King) has evoked the mantra of “no bullshit.” In early 2009, she played a string of instrumental acoustic shows, dubbed the “Solo Guitar and No Other Bullshit Tour.” But the music she’s bringing to Park West on Thursday would never have fit in on those dates. A total departure from her acoustic roots, Junior is the closest King has gotten to making a straight-up rock album.
King has been amplified before, but she has never turned out a riff as punky as the one on “Death Head.” And a little while back, “Falling Day,” could easily have been a quieter number with the whispered vocals that characterized her earlier work. It was only on her third album, 2006’s …Until We Felt Red, that King fleshed out her sound and started singing over some of her material. But this time, the full band instrumentation works in her favor — the drums and guitar add enough lo-fi energy to blow through the song’s five-and-a-half minute running time, and King’s voice proves she is frontwoman material.
Surprisingly, Junior remains quintessentially Kaki King. Every melody sounds distinctly hers without feeling recycled. It's a feat, but it’s no big deal to her.
“When Russell Simmons said to the Beastie Boys, ‘Let’s not make a punk record, let’s make a rap record,’ they were freaked out,” she says. “He was like, ‘You guys are going to sound like yourselves, don’t worry about it.’ When I do records, I don’t worry about it.”
Junior is the most fired up King has ever sounded. But being musically upbeat doesn’t necessarily equate to feeling upbeat. “Communist Friends” exemplifies her happy-on-the-outside, sad-on-the-inside dichotomy as she sings about death over sunny guitar chords. And looking at the song titles — “Everything Has An End, Even Sadness” and “Spit It Back In My Mouth” — it’s clear that if her last album was Dreaming of Revenge, Junior is Kaki King awake and living it.
“I was in a lot of physical and emotional pain at the time of making the album,” King says. “I was thinking, God, wouldn’t it be great to be somebody else right now. It was a hard time.”
During the recording process, King battled a sinus infection that went undiagnosed for three months. If the title “My Nerves That Committed Suicide,” is any indication of how she was feeling, making the record was certainly a challenge.
“It was causing crazy migraines. I didn’t understand why. Nobody thought that. It was like, ‘We’ll give you a bunch of CAT scans and MRIs.’ Shit that was completely terrifying.”
The infection was eventually treated, but King also had to deal with a breakup, chronicled in the touching album closer, “Sunnyside.” The song, performed by King and her acoustic guitar, is one of the most vulnerable moments in her career to date. Her first ventures into singing may have been abstract experiments, but the deeply personal lyrics on “Sunnyside” are disarmingly intimate.
“That wasn’t a conscious decision to write that song,” King says. “It was a conscious decision to put that on the record and allow a big part of my life to be revealed to public scrutiny.”
But King says putting the song on the record — even after getting approval from her ex — wasn’t a source of relief.
“It’s just a song,” she says. “I hope it’s not too personal. I hope there’s some universal thing inside. People can listen to it across the world and take something from that.”
Fans can certainly take away something happier from her live show. During her encores, a solo King performs the song “Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers” with the help of loop pedals. But on last month’s European tour, King started leaving her loops running and jumping in to the crowd.
“With that song, it’s so structured, so I just leave it on and come dance with the crowd,” she says. “It’s a big thank you tribute to the crowd for coming to show. People are super psyched, so for the rest of the tour, we’re going to be dancing.”
You can dance with Kaki King and An Horse at Park West On May 6th. You can get tickets here.