Kimbra strives for self-improvement on her third album. Nick Bollinger assesses the results.
KImbra Photo: Micaiah Carter
It could be seen as a mixed blessing when the hit that propels you onto the world stage is, in essence, someone else’s record. The blessing is in suddenly having a lot of people’s attention; the challenge is - in the face of that attention - to establish who you really are.
That was the case when New Zealand singer Kimbra featured prominently on ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, a global number one early this decade for Belgian-Australian star Gotye.
Primal Heart Photo: supplied
Primal Heart, Kimbra’s third album, opens with ‘The Good War’, an expansive pop ballad built on loops of synthesiser and percussion, with wordless vocal phrase - which sounds like an idea for a tune hummed into a Dictaphone - becomes the driving motif of the whole song.
It may not be a million miles in tone from that Gotye hit, and yet it proves beyond doubt that Kimbra Lee Johnson is more than capable of crafting her own hooks.
Yet in many ways Primal Heart a collaborative project too. Her chief ally here is John Congleton, the former indie-rock producer who oversaw St Vincent’s breakthrough self-titled album.
There’s a roll-call of co-writers, the most high-profile of which is probably Skrillex, the American electronic dance producer, with whom Kimbra wrote ‘Top Of The World’. And with its African-inspired rhythm and chant, not to mention a vocal that is almost a rap, it’s not quite like anything Skrillex or Kimbra has done before. It is rather appealing, though.
KImbra always sings well, but it is in the slower-paced pieces that her voice is at its most varied and expressive - and perhaps reveals the most of herself.
“There’s a better version of me,” she sings in ‘Version Of Me’, and the unselfconscious way she takes on that aspirational phrase might be a residue of all the time she’s spent in California these last few years. But in many ways it’s the underlying theme of this whole record. Making something of oneself, or improving on the model you already have, is an idea that comes up again and again.
Primal Heart is an album that has clearly had a lot of time, effort and expertise expended on it. It’s diverse and at times adventurous, while pulling all those strands into something more cohesive than either of her previous collections. Yet in the end it’s not an album that tells us who Kimbra is, so much as an album about she wants to be.
Primal Heart is available on Warners
