Author: Tyran Grillo

John Holloway: Veracini Sonatas (ECM New Series 1889)

| Tyran Grillo

Veracini Sonatas

Veracini Sonatas

John Holloway violin
Jaap ter Linden cello
Lars Ulrik Mortensen cembalo
Recorded September 2003, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Executive Producer: Manfred Eicher

Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768) is the subject of John Holloway’s fourth ECM traversal of Baroque violin repertoire. Joined now by cellist Jaap ter Linden and harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, who together comprise a formidable continuo, Holloway mines the ore of yet another underrepresented violinist-composer, this one an iconoclast to the last: showman, itinerant solo artist, and experimenter. The variety of his contributions to the sonata canon of the time—in both its four- and five-movement incarnations—is expertly represented on this disc. Through them all runs a deep mineral vein of melodic and atmospheric sensitivity.

The Sonata No. 1 in g minor, composed in 1721, comes from the composer’s Opus 1. Its pentagonal structure flies effortlessly from Holloway’s bow, by which he elicits a tone so organic that one hardly notices the trills and mordents of his interpretive genius—some of the most artful to be found in the world of Baroque violining. Whether by the leaping Allegros or the darker, quasi-operatic turns, Holloway and friends mark the passage of this music with instruments as cartographic as they are sonorous.

One quickly notices an airiness to this music that, while charming, is never paltry. This is due equally to the writing and to the playing, both of which work in lively, scintillating congruence. And even though Holloway occupies the spotlight, the interactions between cello and harpsichord are so integral—the former weaving comets through the latter’s pinpointed stars—that to imagine the music without them is to imagine a sky without clouds. The result is a sense of open space, whereby each sonata lends grandeur to even the airiest movements—to wit: the Largo that begins the Sonata No. 5 in C Major. Taken from the Sonate a violino, o flauto solo, e basso, a collection that predates the Opus 1 by five years yet which was published only posthumously, it sketches canvas with bolder ground lines. This renders the exuberant movements all the more emphatic, enacting balance between the violin’s flight paths and the bass lines entrenched below. The concluding Allegro emotes with bravado in a blush of call and response.

The date of composition of the Sonata No. 1 in D Major, from Veracini’s “dissertation” on Corelli’s Opus 5, is uncertain. Considering its programmatic brilliance, youth dominates the possibilities. The dual voicing in particular invokes the antennae of a butterfly fresh from the cocoon. The contrast of this sonata’s shadows and lights presage the maturity of narrative voice achieved in the Sonata No. 6 in A Major, from Veracini’s Opus 2, the Sonate accademiche. Written in 1744, its sweep and drama are on par with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The brief Siciliana that opens betrays nothing of the variety about to ensue. This one has it all: tearful beauty and folk-like revelry in equal measure. At its center is a memorable Andante, in which we are treated to a lute-registered harpsichord, while pizzicato cello and muted strings from the violin touch hands in a most delicate choreography before funneling into a spirited Allegro assai to superb closure.

Where some composers have left only breadcrumbs for future listeners to follow in the wake of paltry imitations, this benchmark recording offers loaves of sonic goodness that are as warm and nourishing as the days they were first baked. The mastery of their realization is matched only by the engineering, which captures details from a respectable distance. Yet another essential document of 18th-century repertoire from those who know its secrets best.

Leonidas Kavakos/Péter Nagy: Stravinsky/Bach (ECM New Series 1855)

| Tyran Grillo

Stravinsky:Bach

Stravinsky/Bach

Leonidas Kavakos violin
Péter Nagy piano
Recorded October 2002, Radio Studio DRS, Zurich
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Mirrors or two sides of the same coin? This electrifying album by Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos and Hungarian pianist Péter Nagy answers the question: neither. Stravinsky was indebted to Bach, as so many who put pen to staves ever will be, and explored the Baroque master’s architectures to the very end—even working, the story goes, on Bach transcriptions on his death bed. Yet the Russian iconoclast accomplished a remarkable something that set him apart. Unlike so many before him, he did not shine his light through Bach’s prism but rather shined Bach’s through his own.

Stravinsky’s crucible in this regard was at its hottest in the Duo concertant (1931/32). One of two pieces written for violinist Samuel Dushkin (this for violin and piano, the other his 1931 Violin Concerto), it was not in a format the composer favored at the time but one he nonetheless reconciled through neoclassical rigor. Oscillating between the earthly and the mythological, the piece its composer called a “musical versification” finds unity in gradually joining the two. The first and last of its five movements—the Cantilène and the Dithyrambe—bear mysterious nomenclature. The one blossoms from a pianistic blush to an overpowering charge from the bow. The other drips with lachrymose quality, suspended high above Olympus casting threads to mortal hearts down below. Between them is another dyad, this of two “Epilogues” of friction and protraction in turn. And with them is the sprightly Gigue, one of Stravinsky’s finest moments, played here with integrity.

What sets Kavakos’s playing apart is his ability to be at once fluid and sharp, a quality that lends itself well to the above but also to the below, for in the Partita No. 1 in B minor that follows we hear exactly this contradiction at play. Although two centuries separate these works, Bach’s solo violin masterpiece feels remarkably present in this rendering. Kavakos gives the almighty Allemande a stately treatment, beginning with it a series of four movements and their faster “Doubles.” The first of the latter reveals barest tuning issues in Kavakos’s instrument, but these are quickly brushed away by the Corrente, which he plays with especial care, in the process exploiting the record’s engineering at full potential. The Sarabande likewise unfolds in its dance of blade and water toward the final Tempo di Borea and its Double, by which the music reaches a cavernous interior filled with stalagmites pontific.

The program returns to Stravinsky with the 1933 Suite Italienne for violin and piano. Based on his ballet Pulcinella, it proves the glistening counterpart to the Duo concertant, the spring to its thaw. The affirmation of its introductory motives barely hints at the fiery Tarantella which is the piece’s prime turn—a ball of yarn expertly unraveled. Kavakos’s hefty double stops nourish their flames on Nagy’s pointillist sparks. The folk-like Scherzino is another highlight and sets up the Minuet and Finale with authorial flourish.

From these concentrations we return once more to Bach, whose Sonata No. 1 in G minor reveals further affinity. From the cautious first half to the dawn-like awakening of the third movement and into the forward thinking of the final Presto, it develops itself like one long proclamation—slowed here and sped up there—until it glows.

Those thinking of buying this album for ECM’s treatment of the Bach will want to check out Holloway and Kremer’s versions first. In any event, the Sonatas and Partitas will always overshadow their interpreter. For the Stravinsky? Look no further.

Ghazal: The Rain (ECM 1840)

| Tyran Grillo

The Rain

Ghazal
The Rain

Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh
Shujaat Husain Khan sitar, vocals
Sandeep Das tabla
Concert recording, May 28, 2001, Radio Studio DRS, Bern
Recording engineer: Andy Mettler
Recording producer: Kjell Keller
Edited, remixed, and mastered at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Kayhan Kalhor, Manfred Eicher, and Jan Erik Kongshaug
Album produced by Manfred Eicher

One cannot become full without first being empty.

In the presence of Ghazal, vicarious though it may be through the medium of a single album, things drain away. There is no excuse for distraction, no reason to hear this music as anything but a portal between states of mind and body. Kayhan Kalhor plays the kamancheh, an Iranian spike fiddle with a sound like the Byzantine lyra, and with it cinches horizons in a cosmic string game. Shujaat Khan plays sitar and sings. Khan comes from a long line of raga masters and has been featured on over 60 albums, though western listeners are most likely to have encountered him via Waiting for Love, released 1998 on India Archive Music. It is his deepest recording yet and one I was lucky enough to discover after buying it at a concert given by its tabla player, Samir Chatterjee. On the subject of tabla, one must acknowledge Sandeep Das, who since debuting at the age of 15 with Ravi Shankar has become one of the greatest living proponents of the instrument and who joins Kalhor and Khan in a timeless performance. Thus, Ghazal’s three sides blend two musical traditions (North Indian and Persian) with one purpose: to send you.

Recorded live in Berne, Switzerland, The Rain is divided into three long-form improvisations on traditional motifs, averaging 18 minutes each. “Fire” opens with a blush of sitar, a splash of sun on the well-worn path of the kamancheh’s tearful song. The expectation in Khan’s singing, indistinguishably potent through throat and string, marks that path with a mapmaker’s intuition. Khan’s voice is almost startling, providing that moment of satori on which everything hinges. Vocal cues are left intact, loosing the birds of Kalhor’s flights from their cages: signals born of moments yet predestined beyond all sense of time. In contrast, the tabla arises from the very earth, its skins mineral-rough against a backdrop of unforced biorhythms.

“Dawn” is a prayer for Kalhor, who awakens, stirring like the forest in early light and coaxing buds from their stems to broaden the promise of spring. His branches survive by means of their own photosynthesis, taking what they need from below to express themselves skyward. Khan’s singing spins air into filament, a thread without a needle unraveling from that seam where sky meets settlement. Such is the pond into which the stone of “Eternity” is dropped. Its ripples manifest a dialogue between heaven (Kalhor) and earth (Khan). The presence of tabla only makes the melodies freer, absolving words from their social sins. The fulcrum of this balancing act comes in the form of a chromatic undulation in the sitar that like a mountain is grounded yet untouchable, pointing toward the gaping mouth of silence from which it was born.

One cannot become empty without first being full.

Sylvie Courvoisier: Abaton (ECM 1838/39)

| Tyran Grillo

Abaton

Sylvie Courvoisier
Abaton

Sylvie Courvoisier piano
Mark Feldman violin
Erik Friedlander cello
Recorded September 2002 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The ancient Greek title of Abaton denotes, abstractly, an “inaccessible place” and, practically, a space believed to have curative properties when used for ritual sleep by those deemed worthy of its seclusion. It also names the trio performing here under its auspices. Born in Switzerland, pianist Courvoisier has lived and worked in New York City since 1998. This is her only ECM appearance thus far, but with it she makes a far-reaching splash. Violinist Mark Feldman, who after a string of successful releases with the John Abercrombie Quartet explores his classical foundations through the pianist’s evocative writing, and cellist Erik Friedlander, another New Yorker whose penchant for edges finds him in comfortably eclectic tenure, accompany her. Together they have forged something so realistic that it can only be enchanting. Indeed, what began as a recording exclusively of Courvoisier’s compositions, four of which comprise the first disc, turned into a double album at the behest of producer Manfred Eicher, who encouraged the musicians to improvise another disc’s worth of material once the initial recording was complete.

SC

“Ianicum,” with which the album begins, is also its postmodern statement par excellence. Courvoisier daubs the canvas with barest ash, producing an audible equivalent of the album’s cover art, while Feldman and Friedlander draw a winter moon’s halo around her. From these introductions coalesces a mirror structure: strings on one side, keyboard on the other. Direct plucking of piano strings signals tectonic movements, a breaking of surface that flirts with indecipherability even as it speaks clear as day to our mental sanctums. Courvoisier’s internalism is echoed by pizzicati, prompting Friedlander to own the shadows of interpretive duty for a spell. Into this dynamic context wanders Feldman, who leaves a trail of breadcrumbs both familiar and newly inspired. The pianism of “Orodruin,” by contrast lights the cello’s fuses in an asymptotic dance between the macabre and material reality. Unisons somehow make it through, angelic and suspended in the glow of afterlife. The title composition is also for the trio. In it, linguistic affinities abound, dialecting over time as voices become protracted and distinct.

Courvoisier is absent for “Poco a poco,” making for a slicker, more chameleonic experience. The effect is celebratory at heart and delineates a realm where nostalgia for 20th-century chamber music blends motifs with assurance. Feldman and Friedlander are an intuitive pair in a tertiary drama.

Each of the 19 improvisations that follow is a vignette of eclectic power. Confronted with titles such as “Icaria” (of which there are three versions) and “Clio” (Greek muse of history), one can’t help but read mythological impulses behind these ad hoc constructions. Words and images fall short of their affective spectrum, dancing among the shadows across the wall of Plato’s allegorical cave. These figures haunt themselves, stepping into their own dreams as if through water.

As fascinating as the trio’s full-on interactivity can be (cf. “Archaos”), it is in the program’s solo portions where brilliance truly crystallizes. Feldman draws the most mournful bow through “Imke’s,” a candle flame in sound that holds on to wick like life itself and draws melody from oxygen. Friedlander is not far behind in “Turoine” and “Ava’s,” walking a tightrope between regret and resolve. Yet it is Courvoisier, tracing an arc from “The Scar of Lotte” through the organic preparations of “Brobdingnag” and lastly to “Narnia,” who houses the album’s spirit with most of its wing fibers intact. Her notes become indistinguishable from the snowflakes beyond the wardrobe, reminding us that quietude sits on the throne of this castle.

The relationship between these two halves—the predetermined and indeterminate—is hardly conversational. It instead forms a palindrome of intention, meeting in the silent middle between disc changes: the album’s very own abaton, waiting to make divided listeners whole again.

1000 followers!

| Tyran Grillo

As of this week, between sound and space has surpassed 1000 followers: about one per ECM album I’ve reviewed thus far. That makes me as happy as Arvo Pärt riding his bicycle:

Cycling Pärt

Marcin Wasilewski Trio: January (ECM 2019)

| Tyran Grillo

January

Marcin Wasilewski Trio
January

Marcin Wasilewski piano
Slawomir Kurkiewicz double-bass
Michal Miskiewicz drums
Recorded February 2007, Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Pianist Marcin Wasilewski is a seeker of themes. As nominal leader of one of the most assured trios in recent jazz history, he throws together a variety of sources, moods, and songs into one pot, stirring until every ingredient takes on something of the rest. Bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz are therefore no mere sidemen. Their flavors permeate every morsel of this sonic stew, the group’s sophomore disc for ECM. With well over a decade of steady experience going into this record, it would be harder not to enjoy the synergy at play.

As per usual, the set list is grab bag of delights. Wasilewski leads off “The First Touch,” one of four original tunes, on a tender foot. The rhythm section here marks time by beats irregular and less discernible: kisses of raindrops before the album’s quiet storm. The title track, another penned by the pianist, is as somber as its season and finds Miskiewicz in a decorative mode. Balancing these are “The Cat” and “The Young and Cinema,” both decidedly hipper affairs replete with flourish and sparkle. Drums and bass crosstalk beautifully in both, the latter miked in such a way as to capture every inflection with immediate clarity.

Brightening the music’s silver screen pulse is Ennio Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso,” of which the pianism is so delicate that it nearly floats away of its own volition. Gentle, yes, but patterned by the razor edge of nostalgia. Such blurring between image and sound is paramount at ECM, and fans of the label will encounter much to admire between two cuts suggested by producer Manfred Eicher. The trio’s loving attention to detail is especially poignant in “Vignette,” which casts a backward glance to Gary Peacock’s seminal yet often-neglected Tales Of Another. The bassing here is magnetic, independent yet resolving by a gradual return to fold. By contrast, jocularity abounds in Carla Bley’s “King Korn,” which gets a treatment to be reckoned with. There is, further, a poignant nod to Tomasz Stanko—with whom the trio first gained international notoriety—by way of “Balladyna,” an enduring swirl of leaves fallen from the tree of Stanko’s label debut.

The group’s tradition of pop do-overs continues with Prince’s “Diamonds and Pearls,” bringing to light the album’s most soaring passage and providing an aerial view of the trio’s melodic landscape. All of this ties together in “New York 2007.” This improvised blip completes the radar sweep by which this album navigates. January belongs on any jazz lover’s shelf right next to Changing Places as yet another groundbreaking statement of trio-ism from ECM. Its sounds are hollow-boned and ready to fly.

Ayako Shirasaki: Some Other Time

| Tyran Grillo

Some Other Time

Ayako Shirasaki brings world-class jazz down to earth on Some Other Time. For this, her fifth album, the Japan-born and New York-based pianist is joined by bassist Noriko Ueda and drummer Quincy Davis. That Shirasaki cut her teeth on the bebop greats—Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, and Bud Powell, to name but a few—should come as no surprise. Neither should the fact that, in her defining twenties, the beauties of Bill Evans, Art Tatum, and Kenny Barron (her mentor at the Manhattan School of Music) would be just as influential in defining her current sound, a perfect admixture of both.

This being her first trio album in eight years, Shirasaki brings a wealth of maturation into the studio. “In that time my life has greatly changed by having two kids,” she tells me during a recent interview. “I’m not only a musician anymore but also a mother, wife, and teacher.” Shirasaki further acknowledges her children as having an effect on her playing: “I think that in dealing with small children everything has to be clear, natural, and easy for them to understand. These elements have changed my music a little bit. I have also become more openhearted since becoming a mother.”It’s an unenviable identity to inhabit in a male-dominated profession, but hearing her phenomenal rendition of “Oleo,” such labels cease to matter. This Sonny Rollins gem floats effortlessly from her fingertips with the punch of Chick Corea and the underlying elegance of Marc Copland.

Shirasaki is a cat with nine lives who imbues her playing with nods to various stages of jazz history. That said, she makes no pretensions about theme:“It’s funny, I never had any intension to make this album into a particular direction. I just followed my heart, and still the album developed a certain character.” And while some of that character comes from nods to the American Songbook, notably in the nostalgic hipness of “Long Ago and Far Away” (Jerome Kern) and her solo take on Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” (a mission statement if there ever was one), Shirasaki brings more than a rainbow’s worth of colors to this gallery of moods by way of her interpretive prowess. Whether in the vivid, classic sound of “April in Paris” (Vernon Duke) or the bluesy urbanity of “My Man’s Gone” (George Gershwin), a certain optimism persists, although perhaps nowhere more so than in “Hope.” This Lars Jansson tune proves just how positive jazz can become in the pianist’s hands. Shirasaki: “Music has an aspect to heal people’s heart when they’re down or stressed for any reason. Jazz has such power in energetic and beautiful ways to impart positive messages.”If we hear anything in this revelry, it is the confidence in Shirasaki’s step; a confidence born of love.

These are, of course, songs without words, and as such get to the heart of every melody without distraction. Such conviction comes from Shirasaki’s rigorous classical training, which through the prism of the piano trio format lends special focus. “I love playing solo,” Shirasaki notes, “as I can control all the sound, harmony, bass, and rhythms from beginning to end, but it can be lonely. The trio brings out individual colors and tasks. Interaction between the three brings the music to another level. I think the piano trio is a very strong unit for being ‘minimal.’”

Ayako

Such are the hallmarks, too, of her own tunes. “Sunrise” connotes the luminosity of her craft to exponential degree. Its invigorations emote with a welcoming spirit, fitting like well-worn shoes. The improvising here may not be fierce, and is even a bit saccharine, but nevertheless balances touch and go with assurance. Corea again lurks in the staggered harmonies and independent hands of “3 Steps Forward,” throughout which the superb rhythm section is plush and omnipresent, of which the phrasing speaks to tasteful attunement all around. “Peace of Mind” is another optimistic slice of forward-thinking jazz. Sparkling highs in the right hand contrast beautifully with thumping bass, the latter of which has a remarkable solo, delicate yet forthright.

As an avid enka (Japanese popular folk) and traditional Japanese music listener, I was delighted to encounter on this album such spirited takes on Saburō Kitajima’s “Yosaku” and the children’s song “Antagata dokosa.” When asked about her inclusion of these particular tunes, Shirasaki discusses her experiences performing in Japan as one motivation. “Another reason is that simply I like to play these songs. ‘Antagata dokosa’ came up since I used this song for my music class for kids and found that its odd metering carried over into jazz in a unique way.For ‘Yosaku,’ I just like the bluesy feeling of its chord progression (re-harmonized from the original version). It was quite a joy to find that ‘Yosaku’ could transform into jazz!” Both tracks show the trio at its swinging best and bring to life the freshness of Shirasaki’s thinking.

Like the title track by Leonard Bernstein, the album as a whole has a sense of breathing about it, as if it were being sung through the body rather than through an instrument. The affective commitment required to achieve this dynamic amounts to no small task, but Shirasaki and her trio make it sound natural as can be. In her own words: “I always want to play better than yesterday.” Let us hope, then, that there will be many other times to come.

Kosi: One More Cup of Coffee

| Tyran Grillo

One More Cup of Coffee

ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i’d kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter
you to jones beach
or maybe coney island
or maybe just to my house
–from “kidnap poem,” by Nikki Giovanni

Kosi is Akosua Gyebi Sorensen, a child of New York who has grown into her own on a bold, reflective debut album. One Cup of Coffee makes no excuses, pulls no punches, and leaves the mirror streaked with experience. Raised by hardworking immigrants in Southeast Queens, Kosi took to her own musical formations early on, despite her household tastes. “My parents played records of Jimmy Cliff and Shirley Caesar,” she muses, “but I always preferred to borrow Billy Holiday albums from the library. I don’t know what drew me to her as a seven- or eight-year-old child, as I couldn’t possibly have understood what I was hearing.” Yet it’s clear from her words and her sounds that a deeper understanding was just waiting for the ideal moment to emerge.

Kosi would go on to study at Brooklyn College, by which time her love of singing had already been instilled through participation in her local church choir. Outside the congregation, life had its way. As any musician knows, the City can be an unforgiving sea of voices vying to be heard, as attested by the fact that Kosi’s uncompromising talents are these days more often heard echoing through subway tunnels—a gig she’s owned since around Thanksgiving of 2013. And certainly we can give thanks that One More Cup of Coffee has materialized for those unable to ride the rails, for it shows just how those cavernous transportation portals have honed her art into something at once inviting and aloof.

Accompanied by guitarist Aron Marchak, she weaves a spell that is as much a portrait of her environment as of the contradictions of her own urbanity. To these ears, the relationship between voice and guitar is tight as yin and yang—so attuned, in fact, that one who didn’t know any better could be forgiven in thinking that Kosi was accompanying herself. The artist tells a different story.

“I’ve only been working with Aron for about a year. He works with many different artists in a variety of different styles (jazz, gospel, r&b, rock, etc.), and so he’s usually prepared to do whatever I ask him to do, provided I can articulate clearly what I want from him. Also, contrary to popular belief about singers, I’m not exactly the most demanding human being, and I’m ready and willing to work with whatever I’m given. The combination of his adaptability and my adaptability gives the illusion of ‘tightness’ when in fact, it’s the loosest of all possible partnerships.”

To that effect, Kosi sings with heart, about heart, and allows the disjointedness of lived experience to voice itself as memory. Her diction crinkles like a windblown shopping bag, in which rattles a variety of reference points. From jazz to blues to neo-soul: it’s all there, pre-tapped and ready to be heard, but with such freshness of vision that it could be from no other singer. This is Kosi’s strength, a raw yet elegant presentation that explodes with originality, as is especially the case when one considers the album’s only two standards alongside the intensities of her own songcraft. Of those tunes, she notes “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as something of a random choice:

“In a rehearsal with Aron one day, while I was searching through my folder for something or other, he started playing it and, recognizing it, I sang along with him. I liked how it sounded, so I suggested that we perform it at the show for which we were rehearsing. The inclusion of one wordless standard became a habit for us after that. Actually, maybe more of a ritual than a habit. I like the idea of singing wordless tunes because it makes me a part of the ensemble rather than just being a feature to be accompanied.”

The Mingus classic proves a fitting introduction, easing us into the album’s nocturnal universe without betraying the emotional rollercoaster about to ensue. Kosi’s instrumentality applies a smooth appliqué to Aron’s rich picking, carrying the tune in gracious slings of honor. Of the album’s other standard, “Autumn in New York,” Kosi says the following: “The album was released in autumn in New York. I was also born in autumn in New York. Autumn is my favorite season, and New York is the only city with which I identify. If I had to choose only one standard to identify with, that would have to be it.” In the duo’s purview, this song lovingly connects indoors to outdoors, nature to nurture. A leisurely stroll through Central Park. A counting of blessings on ten fingers. A romantic vision of a city ravished yet perseverant.

Kosi

Yet what makes One More Cup of Coffee such a memorable experience is its multifaceted exploration of womanhood, which in Kosi’s diaristic originals comes across as both impervious and vulnerable. The singer cites “Need Your Love” as a prime example of the latter, for what appears on the surface to be a sensual, self-assured song, comes with a price. “It may be the most anti-feminist thing I’ve ever written,” she avers.

“It is about a woman putting on masculine bravado, or in other words, completely compromising her womanhood, so much that she’s willing to degrade, objectify, and overextend herself because she needs to feel ‘loved’ without ever even defining what that love would look or feel like. I am not glorifying this mentality; the narrator of this song is a pitiable creature who has (perhaps momentarily) lost all her strength but is still clinging to a false front. I am admitting to it, though. The narrator is me, or was me at the time when I wrote the song, proving that feminists are not immune to feelings of complete weakness.”

These sentiments bear echoes of third-wave feminist politics, which challenge essentialist (read: popular) notions of gender by owning up to, and learning from, moments of breakdown—as must we all, from time to time. Kosi is unafraid to perform her past as a means of re-creation. The end effect is a song set that de-mythologizes femininity and gets real for an hour. It’s a message touted by such visionaries as Audre Lorde, whose subscription to the erotic over romance reclaimed the former’s vilified spectrum as a levee against the tide of despair. As Lorde once wrote, “There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity.”

With this in mind, we hear songs like “Karen” in more nuanced light—not as professions but obsessions of self-image, refracted through the soul and body of another, succumbing to love’s illusions all the same. Likewise, “Marlene” walks the cracks of heartbreak between suspicion and bodily trust, the infection of affection held under the microscope, and erupts into the album’s most cathartic moment: a grunt that plays like some visceral, operatic win. A verbal takedown of mind over matter, to be sure. Such expectorations are tempered by inhalations of resolve, as in the inebriated haze of “The Last Shot,” which is all about losing faith but also gaining trust in others when the chips are down. The bluesy perseverance of “Once and Future” negotiates even harder-won affirmations.

The relationships portrayed on the album are all the more realistic for being so fleeting. Whether the compromises of the title track (“One guitar string missing—I think that one’s the G? / One knight in tarnished armor come to rescue me”) or the brokenness of “Little Miss Generous,” there is a genuine recognition that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. All of which funnels into “I Wrote you a Song,” the album’s unlisted bonus track, which finds beauty in solitude and refuses the need of another body to define self-worth, confirming that love must start with the self before it can ever trickle into another’s waters. “I wrote you a song that you’ll never hear,” she sings, “cuz I’ll only sing it when I know you’re not near.” Hearing these words, we cannot deny them knowing that we are their substitute targets.

Although Kosi lays no claims to an overarching theme, the album deals with gargantuan questions of love and loss all the same, and does so with unabashed honesty. At times confrontational, at others lyrical, her personality hits you with all it has to offer. If you can’t handle it, don’t run away. Just listen more.