Kahimi Karie

Trapéziste (Victor, Japan)
by Michael McCarthy

Speaking of Kahimi Karie, the gal just keeps getting more and more obscure with every album. Her latest release, Trapéziste (Victor, Japan), is a strange yet intoxicating trip that calls to mind, well, Radiohead’s recent albums. Songs like “Tornado (Outside)” and the title track seem to lack any structure the first few times you hear them, as if she is merely singing her often ridiculous, albeit poetic, lyrics over them randomly. And yet the songs infect you, staying inside your head more and more after each listen, sucking you in the way any great album should. And you can’t blame Momus for the obscurity of this disc since Karie wrote most of the lyrics and produced the album, collaborating mostly with Japanese musicians, herself. In fact, the disc is Momus-free, to the surprise of many longtime fans. Although she sings in French and English only on this release, much of the music is in the J-pop vein. (Not the silly, factory-made J-pop, but the more infectious, artsy J-pop.) Well, that and jazz. With sax, organ, and other such live instruments, you’ll feel like you’re in a smoky jazz club as you listen to some of these songs. Just don’t pay much attention to those lyrics. “People think the girls are weird, but people are the ones that are weird,” she sings in “About the Girls.” (And, yes, she wrote those words herself.) For someone who is constantly becoming more and more artistic, it’s amazing that she has so little to say. (www.jvcmusic.co.jp)