KEE AVIL - Spine

For Canadian artist Vicky Mettler, aka Kee Avil, the second album is yet another challenge. A step into even more arduous and insatiable chasms of experimentation, a further whisper that resembles a screech, a brutal laceration of what remains of a rock instrumental setup, an extreme reinvention of the creative language put in place with her debut "Crease".

It's a new form of beauty that emerges from Kee Avil's second album, released on the ever-farsighted Constellation. A project preceded by one of the most disturbing and fascinating singles of the year so far, a scratching rock track with bass, guitars and synths in search of the Pied Piper of Hamelin's secret. A song that challenges boundaries never crossed by Sonic Youth and PJ Harvey, and comes back victorious, not without claiming innocent victims along the way.

The ten songs on "Spine" are minimal to a fault: no more than four elements per track, and a self-imposed rigor that strips the already skeletal compositions of blood, flesh and bone.

Written during a break in the "Crease" tour, the new album shows none of the normalization that usually follows a more intense relationship with an audience. From the very first notes of "Felt", harmonic distortions, jagged sounds, razor-sharp guitars, slurring rhythms and noise crackle throw the restless, harsh sonic modulations into disarray. Nothing strange, when compared to the even more extreme "The Iris Dry", a succession of whispers and raw vocal flashes trapped in metallic textures of dubious origin and devilish rhythmic stomping.

"Spine" is not an easy record to take in: disturbing but never excessive, dark and unsettled, yet stimulating. The ever-palpable emotional trepidation and sharp harmonic intuitions find fertile ground across the ten tracks, amid harrying glitch incursions ("Gelatin"), voices choked with terror ("Under"), or alterations of sounds and noises more piercing than silence ("Fading").

Goth traces surface and flatter the complex, jagged harmonic structures with decisive forays into dark-folk ("Remember Me"), and even more organic, devastating, almost horror-tinged destructurings of a sick, bloodless sonic fabric ("Croak").

It's no surprise that Kee Avil cites Jenny Hval and This Heat among her inspirations. From the former she's drawn that interdisciplinary nature she blends to perfection in the achingly poetic “At His Hands”; from the English art-rock outfit she echoes skeletal industrial influences in the obsessive, unsettling “Do This Again”.

“Spine” is less a confirmation of Kee Avil's alien, original talent than another precious, self-contained body of work. A record that feeds on discord and dissonance, with a fervour and spirituality that are as fresh as they are compelling.

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15/05/2024