She’s an amalgam of all the best pop made over the past ten years. She’s New Zealand born, she’s Australia based, and she’s the girl in that Gotye video that you’ve been unable to escape for the past two months. Her name is Kimbra, and her sugary voice and whole grain earnestness land her squarely in the Wes Anderson zone of “quirky, but not overbearingly so.” That’s a beautiful thing.
(Here’s this in case you’ve been living in a meticulously FM-Radio-Proofed box.)
As a writer, singer and guitarist, Kimbra is a triple threat. From the release of her first album, Vows, she has gone on to reveal shades of everything from Adele to Amy Winehouse and indulged in the occasional injections of R&B and a schmoozy brand of blues. She plays with genre like a toy, and her videos are equally experimental. “Settle Down” has become a cult youtube hit by harnessing restless, 90s flavored angst, (think American Beauty on acid) and that’s the third most interesting thing about the video after #1, Kimbra doing the “correct” version of the Elaine dance from Seinfeld and #2, her gigantic eyeballs.
Hers is a voice and a style truly built for the Gaga and Gotye era of art house pop. Kimbra is energetic, exciting, and, by turns, extremely clever. Fans of the genre would be wise to forgive the overplayed experiment with Gotye and keep an eye on her soon to be released new album. You can find more from Kimbra and other Warner Sound artists here. You can also find a video of Jigsaw falling off of a tricycle here, but I don’t see how that’s relevant. Try to focus.
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