Fittingly, given the weird and wonderful musical year I’ve had since I started writing for Ave Noctum, my last review of 2023 is as beautiful, weird and gloriously mad as they come. I try to come to new music with as open a mind as I can, but the sheer depth and peculiarity of Kinit Her still managed to catch me on the hop. I mean, beyond the self-assigned label of “symbolist post-folk”, which could mean more or less anything with slightly off-kilter folk sensibilities, from Green Lung to Amadou & Mariam, I’m really struggling to put this album in anything even vaguely resembling a box.
I’ve got some loose musical associations, that range from the sort of twangy Americana that Blues for Neighbors had a spirited crack at in my last but one review, the weird, heavier end of 60s folk rock (such as Steeleye Span’s version of Alison Gross), a hefty dose of stuttering, experimental Cosmo Jones Beat Machine vibes, there’s a recurring rhythm/bass line that reminds me of a desperately obscure old goth outfit (Catherines Cathedral, for the connoisseurs), and there’s lots here that you can tie into the stranger, more experimental end of folk and post in a more general sense. They also – maddeningly – forcefully remind me of another band/artist that I know and love, but I can’t actually place who it is at this point in time. (Fingers crossed I get there before I finish this review.) But pigeonholing the album as a whole? Absolutely not. I haven’t even got a neat formula or pithy, concise description for this one, it just…is its own entity, apparently.
The complex and hard-to-place nature of this album starts to make a little more sense when you realise just how long and hard Kinit Her have been honing their extraordinary sound: founded in Wisconsin in 2005, with a back catalogue of releases that is extensive to say the least. Between studio albums, live albums, EPs, mini albums etc, they’ve already got around 20 releases under their belt, which is more than some bands manage in multiple decades, never mind just shy of 18 years. Talking of multitudes, part of the complexity of this album lies in the sheer number of musicians and instruments involved, which is somewhat ironic given that at its heart, Kinit Her seems to consist of just three people (and for while was just two). But with the exception of female vocalist Jessica Way, pretty much everyone credited wears at least two hats, some as many as four. The three core members alone cover vocals, guitars, strings, horn, and electronics, while the guest musicians provide everything from harmonium to sleigh bells.
All of the above combine to create sound that sits in a remote corner of folk and rock, with a foot in all sorts of genres, including (but not limited to) Americana, neofolk, avant-garde, experimental/psychedelic folk/rock, but doesn’t fully inhabit any of them. It’s the more bizarre end of folk, by way of the spikier sort of neofolk, with the imagery and samples of occult rock like Green Lung, plus the brittle twang of American folk, all with an avant-garde twist, and yet that still doesn’t quite explain what’s going on here. There’s so much happening, and the production is (presumably deliberately?) unpolished, that it could almost be an in-the-field recording of a suitably chaotic pagan rite, with more musicians than you can shake a tambourine at, all trying to come together musically with little to no rehearsal. Which I’m aware makes it sound like a mess, but honestly the messiness is part of its charm. It doesn’t sound so much like a planned, carefully recorded and mixed studio album, as a record of something that spontaneously grew into being while something much bigger was going on. There’s also an element of discord and unease that isn’t necessarily unpleasant, but stops you relaxing into the music too much – think the vaguely unsettling (but still beautiful) key and harmonies of Carol of the Bells.
Particular standouts are Blood Blood Blood (if there’s one line that will stay with me from this album, it’s “what makes the green grass grow is blood”), Without Ending, The Nature Out There, and The Mask of Life, and Jessica Way’s vocals in particular are a highlight throughout. I’m not going to go into individual tracks beyond that, because quite frankly I recommend experiencing The Nature Out There as a whole first and foremost (assuming weird, multi-genre folk is your thing), because words and genre labels can only do so much. Plus the style here is so singular that I don’t know how much sense single tracks are going to make in isolation – there are definitely tracks here that I prefer over others, but I feel like you need to encounter them in context to get what’s going on here – if, indeed, you ever do. Personally, I’m not convinced I’ll ever really get my head around The Nature Out There or Kinit Her in general, but luckily that’s never stopped me listening to/reviewing/appreciating anything.
I don’t know that I can honestly say this is an album that I’ll return to with any real frequency, mainly because it’s A Lot, but I have enjoyed the time I’ve spent with it. And yes, Blood Blood Blood is still stuck in my head.
[Oh and it’s just come to me while editing: the band I was thinking of back at the beginning were Whapweasel, who have a fair number of similarities with Kinit Her, only less overly weird, and more Celtic.]
(7/10 Ellie McGee)
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