iamamiwhoami - Kin

An online contact who's more than a little enthusiastic about Christina Aguilera gave me the link to a weirdly briefly-titled YouTube video of a woman dressed as a tree, claiming there were rumours that it was her comeback material. The most intriguing online music campaign since forever, it was a really fun time to speculate just who it might be - Lady GaGa? Madonna? Bat for Lashes? Bjork? Goldfrapp? It turned out to be a Swedish bitch no one had heard of. Major sad face.

Jonna Lee might well have the misfortune of being pit against all of those far more well-covered and talked-about females and bands, but when dressed in black glitter and contorting about like a twat you're basically asking for attention. Hopefully the songs have improved now that she's stopped giving them single letter titles, and given Sweden's recent history with weird pop artists, I'm cautiously optimistic.

From the get-go there are still echoes of her more mysterious and ethereal emergings: 'sever' opens with a croaky, punctual vocal and a background choir doing their best to pique the atmosphere. It soon descends, though, into a trip-hop beat with fun haunted-house style melodies. The beat becomes more primal and tense on 'drops', though, with rattling drums and laser sound effects, whilst Lee implores us to "speak up, adapt/ watch closely, keep track". One of the album's strongest songs, though, with its clear new wave influence, is 'good worker'. An interesting take on feminism, it sees Lee satirically portraying a woman "looking out your little mind, recognising time has passed/ ready for some further use, denial is a virtue" and concluding "who am I, when all I am is your designated wife?"

Eager to perform is the impression of 'play', where Lee promises "I'll make up songs for us to sing/ you hold my heart with cotton string/ and to your rhythm I will shout" over a slow but infectious dance beat. By contrast, 'in due order' sounds immediately distinctive from the rest of the album, with its gritty, dark synth riff. With its ominous lyrics ("your lives could've been unaffected") and short duration it's a fleeting but detached moment from the rest of kin. She returns, though, to more airy, wispy sounds on 'idle talk', a slow-sailing musing of past relationships that's full of rich electronic sounds but little else remarkable.

The one real duff note of kin, for me, comes in 'rascal', a thoroughly middle-of-the-road piece that hums and stays afloat with no real purpose. 'kill' thankfully picks up the pace again with another bold, breezy and enticing instrumental, before 'goods' plays us out with a dabble of house music.

There's just an air of pretentiousness about the whole audiovisual project that irks me - there're so many stylistic choices and barriers created to try and present herself as alternative and artistic. The choice to neglect capital letters annoys me - not just because I'm an English lit. student, but because it just screams "I want to stand out on your iPod". Perhaps slightly stronger songwriting would make her more noteworthy. For the most part, though, kin is enjoyable and interesting.

Rating: 7/10
Highlights: good worker, play, kill, in due order, goods
Avoid: Rascal

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