AWmusic

Dreaming of Revenge (2008) is Kaki King‘s latest album released March 11, but thanks to iTunes, I got my copy a week early. Kaki King is an instrumental guitar player, who fuses classical-jazz influences with rock influences. She is best known for her fret-tapping techniques a la Michael Hedges, Don Ross, and Preston Reed. Although she has been more of an instrumental guitarist throughout her career, she has taken a liking in performing vocals more often as of late (since Until We Felt Red (2006)). In her first two albums, Everybody Loves You (2003) (my favourite Kaki King album) and Legs to Make Us Longer (2004), listeners would only hear snippets of her soft non-lyrical vocals in the last song of each album. To be honest, when I heard her vocals in Until We Felt Red, I thought it was a pretty bad move. She didn’t prove to be strong vocally in that album, but she has definitely improved since then. Her vocals in Dreaming of Revenge are still soft, but she uses them well as a form of instrumentation–sort of half-speaking, half-singing, which really does best for a voice like hers. You can definitely hear her improvement in songs like “Life Being What It Is” and “Pull Me Out Alive.”

There is definitely less of a band feel from what was captured in Until We Felt Red. You’ll find that some songs have drums, some have swelling violins, but compared to the last album, there’s less of a focus on instruments being played together to fuse a “band” sound, and more of a focus on other instruments being the accompaniment of the guitar. There are some songs that lean towards the mainstream sound. “Pull Me Out Alive” features a more alternative pop rock sound, “Saving Days In a Frozen Head” sounds like an acoustic alternative folk rock number. In both of these songs, she uses an overlaying cascade of vocals, which sounds pleasant, actually.

All in all, this album pretty good. I am just in love with her original sound–that is acoustic blend of instrumental folk rock with the classical influences–and I found just this in Dreaming of Revenge. Maybe it’s appropriate to say that I have also dreamt of revenge on Kaki King’s last album–and with this album, Kaki fulfills such (was that a corny thing to say?).

Here are two tracks I really enjoyed on this album (one of them with vocals):

Kaki King – Air and Kilometers

Kaki King – Life Being What It Is

Buy this CD on Amazon
Buy it on CDUniverse