ALBUM REVIEW: Songs Reveal the Self on Katy Kirby’s ‘Blue Raspberry’
Maeri Ferguson
Posted On January 23, 2024
Processing a relationship and all its messy complications through songwriting is a daunting enough feat, but exploring your identity at the same time could be enough to do some artists in. Katy Kirby, though, is sturdy and steady on Blue Raspberry, the follow-up to her 2021 debut Cool Dry Place. At the heart of it is the story of Kirby coming into her own as a queer woman and surviving her first relationship (and its demise) as such. It’s dramatic and thrilling to watch Kirby unfold, gradually revealing more of herself, song by aching song. One gets the sense that she is just as surprised by what she finds under each overturned stone.
Do not be fooled by the delicate touch of Kirby’s vocals. Her songs pack a punch, in the acerbic tension between two lovers and the selves they present privately versus publicly on “Cubic Zirconia”; in the revenge sex and empty desire of “Wait Listen”; and in the absorption of complete romantic devotion on “Party of the Century.” Kirby’s songs are visceral, even violent at times. “Honey, brine my wounds / chlorine my eyes,” she sings on the almost eerily enchanting “Salt Crystal,” a standout with its soft strings.
“Alexandria,” the album’s focal point, uses the reverberating swipe of a cello to add a sinister undercurrent as she sings gently, “Kiss me up against the guardrail / I’d crack open my chin / before I would let you let me / pull you over the edge.” On the titular track, Kirby finds herself “under her heel / like rock candy / crushed to glitter / laid out on the concrete.”
Katy Kirby (photo by Tonje Thilesen)
On the blink-and-you-miss-it “Fences” — a vignette so beautiful it could be four times as long and still wouldn’t be enough — Kirby seems to make peace with the fleetingness of it all. In the world Blue Raspberry creates, intimacy is as brutal as it is sweet, as apocalyptic as it is awakening.
Kirby’s intricate arrangements beckon a close listening of this record. It’s the surest way to catch every devastating inch of her phrasing and the detailed picture she paints with it. To spend the time with Blue Raspberry is to be totally broken apart by it, but like Kirby, eventually pieced back together, ready to jump in again.
Katy Kirby’s Blue Raspberry is out Jan. 26 on ANTI-.
