Jens Kuross — Crooked Songs (Woodsist)
Crooked Songs is stark but warm, a responsive collaboration between Jens Kuross and his electric piano. Kuross has accompanied Yohei Shikano and Hayden Pedigo, among others, and Crooked Songs, in its ambient grain, in the notes and in their wake, shares with those artists’ work an exactness that remains natural and spontaneous. While not overtly experimental, the record is an exploration, Kuross searching for a freedom which may or may not come.
“What I Miss Most of All,” opens the album in slow motion with languid reverse reverb and a creaking chair. Kuross’ deliberate playing conveys the listener to his vocals, which emerge with a croak and an echo. The tone of the song is low, the music is watery, wavering and round. There’s a slight clank when the keys are pressed, like the instrument is stretching, getting warmed up. You might perceive music being brought to life, note by note. The apex of animation is in the last couplet, “all my reckless ways, I’m leaving/all those jealous days behind,” when Kuross’ voice swells then pulls up just before it seems ready to crack, holding the back half of “behind” in a high rasp. There’s a sense of satisfaction and arrival in the near silence when his fingers leave the keys. You get the sense he’s been here before.
Kuross arrives at a noisier moment towards the end of “Beggar’s Nation.” Each time the song comes to “what goes around it comes around” an atmospheric tension pressures the tender, chiming chords. As Kuross repeats the line, he plays those chords harder and faster, stirring the music. His delivery, almost chanted, is reminiscent of Thom Yorke on “Everything in Its Right Place.” It sounds like a mantra, or a prayer to escape. Even when Kuross returns to softer and slower playing and the pressure subsides there’s a sense of foreboding. Out of a final instrumental bridge, a crunch of feedback courses through Kuross and his piano, distorting his vocals. A great upheaval seems to have come. But rather than break big, the feedback abruptly slides away, leaving Kuross, his chords, and “what goes around it comes around” as quickly as it struck them. Was it a tremor or the actual earthquake? This ambiguity between beginning and end matches the lyric and continues in the playful way Kuross closes the song, aping an ascending xylophone, like a lead-in to morning announcements.
Kuross carries a piece of that melody briefly into the next song, “Hymn of Defeat.” It’s a hymn of, but also a hymn to. From the first lines “there is a kindness in the loss/of who I thought I’d be,” to the last stanza, “If this heart must fail, then let it fail…Cause I know that what's defeating me/Will one day be defeated” we hear Kuross find, if not a way out of the cycle, at least enough silver lining to bear it. “Inside Joke” stays with the concept but looks closer and here Kuross thrives. “This is a one trick pony/it doesn’t matter how you ride…Are you the last man standing/Or just the one that’s left behind?” goes the chorus, again finding the silver lining but turning it, seeing the dark cloud reflected, picking at ironies. Kuross’ vocals are defiant but delicate, rising and falling in register and the mix. He seems to sway over the keys, building up crescendos that never quite climax. But rather than deflate when a particular probe peters out, the song grooves along towards the next attempt. Kuross sounds in command, flowing and curious; a musical poking around. You’re almost surprised when he stops.
Two songs later, when Crooked Songs really ends, it’s with another creak of the chair and Kuross audibly sighing and walking away. But not before asking a question that haunts the record: “who believes a song can change you?/Or that singing sets you free?” The short answer: “today I feel like singing/to stop the world from changing me.” Worth a try.
Alex Johnson
