Okesha Sebert has described her sixth album . (referred to hereafter as Interval) as “the primary album I’ve made the place I felt really free”. It comes accompanied by a prolonged world tour, marketed by a photograph by which the singer expresses her freedom – in what you need to say is a really Kesha-like method – by using a jetski whereas topless. Lengthy-term observers of her turbulent profession might observe that this doesn’t appear so completely different from the way in which she framed her third album, 2017’s Rainbow, which she described on the time as “really saving my life”, and featured her on the duvet bare and was accompanied by a tour known as Fuck the World.
However it will be remiss to disclaim her the power to make an analogous level once more. Rainbow was launched on the peak of her authorized battle along with her former producer “Dr” Luke Gottwald. Kesha had accused him of sexual assault and different allegations, which he denied, leading to a collection of lawsuits and countersuits. Though various producers had been discovered to work on Rainbow, she was nonetheless legally obliged to launch the album – and its two successors – on Gottwald’s Kemosabe label. The 2 reached a settlement in 2023, her contract with Kemosabe expired shortly afterwards, and Interval is now launched on her personal label.
Whereas Rainbow and its instant follow-ups repeatedly mined the authorized disputes and ensuing trauma for lyrical inspiration – a dramatic shift from the screw-you hedonism that powered her huge hits within the early 2010s – Interval indicators a recent begin by, kind of, bringing again the Kesha who boasted about brushing her enamel with Jack Daniel’s and took to the stage accompanied by dancers dressed as big penises. Solely the piano ballad nearer Cathedral appears solely rooted in latest occasions – “Life was so deadly … I died within the hell so I may begin dwelling once more”. Elsewhere, the occasional trace of one thing darkish within the creator’s previous (“I earned the correct to be like this”) is drowned out by the sound of Kesha reverting to kind in no unsure phrases: “take me to the intercourse store”, “bartender pour me up some rattling fluid”, “I like chaos, dripping head to toe”, “gimme gimme gimme all of the boys”.
And who can blame her? Nobody desires to be outlined by trauma, and he or she’s probably eager to claim that the unique Kesha persona was extra to do along with her than the svengali-like producer who found her.
Moreover, it’s a weirdly well timed return. In 2010, Kesha’s scorching mess persona made her an outlier, albeit an outlier whose debut single TiK ToK bought 14m digital copies worldwide. The critic Simon Reynolds neatly famous that if the period’s predominant feminine star Woman Gaga noticed her work as high-concept art-pop in a lineage that included David Bowie and Roxy Music, Kesha was extra like their glam-era rival Alice Cooper. Fifteen years on, we dwell in a pop world at the least partly outlined by Charli xcx’s final album. Perpetually half-cut and lusty, open about her messy failings (“I just like the weird kind, the lowlife … God, I really like a hopeless bastard,” she sings of her style in males on Crimson Flag), Kesha may make a good declare to be a godmother of Brat. Actually, you couldn’t accuse her of leaping on a latter-day pattern, simply as Interval’s diversion into vogue-ish country-pop, Yippee-Ki-Yay, appears much less craven than it would. Kesha has completed previous work in that space – from her 2013 Pitbull collaboration Timber to her duet with Dolly Parton on Rainbow.
Yippee-Ki-Yay’s country-facing sound sits amongst a buffet of present pop types: there’s synthy, 80s-leaning pop-rock you might think about Taylor Swift singing on Delusional and Too Onerous, and mid-tempo disco on Love Eternally, whereas the spectre of hyperpop haunts the warp-speed Boy Loopy and Hudson Mohawke turns up glitchy Auto-Tune-heavy electro on Glow. It’s an album clearly meant to re-establish Kesha on the coronary heart of pop, which implies there’s no room for the interesting weirdness of her 2023 single Eat the Acid, and it’s solely on the closing Cathedral that her voice actually shifts into the full-throttle roar she unleashed overlaying T Rex’s Kids of the Revolution at 2022’s Taylor Hawkins tribute live performance.
That mentioned, the songs are all actually sturdy, full of good little twists and drops, and humorous, self-referential traces: “You’re on TikTok / I’m the fucking OG.” You get the sense of the massed ranks of collaborators – together with everybody from common Father John Misty foil Jonathan Wilson to Madison Love, who counts Blackpink and Addison Rae amongst her songwriting shoppers – actually getting behind her to make Interval a hit. Kesha, in the meantime, performs the a part of Kesha 1.0 to perfection: for all of the lurid lyrical excesses, it by no means feels as if she’s making an attempt too laborious. And why would it not: she’s returning to a task she originated.
This week Alexis listened to
Lathe of Heaven – Aurora
Cognitive dissonance: Lathe of Heaven look weirdly like a brand new wave of British heavy steel band, however Aurora’s sound is equal elements smeary shoegazing and epic early 80s synth-pop. Nice track regardless.
