The Deal sisters -- aided by members of the venerable Los Angeles punk band Fear -- had to fight their way out of a lot to make Title TK (publishing-speak for "name to come"), and you can hear it. This is hot, scratchy, burdened… Read More
un-rock, and one horribly sad album. The drums in "Sinister Fox" could be knocking to get in, or aping gunshots, or maybe it's just Kim hitting her head against the wall again. Despite the frequent jokes in the lyrics,
Title TK is almost painfully intimate. Kim's girlish (or is it boyish?) voice grinds sweetly, weariedly, sloppily inside your brain: "Better I, better I stayed up," she repeats throughout "Put on a Side," while a single bass-guitar note thrums and bends. The songs break themselves apart and regroup uncomfortably. A spare grunge call-and-response leads "Little Fury" into a chugging Martian approximation of a rock song; the light pop verses of "Forced to Drive" dim under the gloom of a twisty, malignant chorus. "Off You" is as direct and heartbreaking as an eighty-five-year-old blues recording, and Kim, her voice clear and full of hope, can't help sounding like a young woman who's lived ten awful lifetimes.
Title TK is absolutely beautiful, but only a fiend would find it merely so.
ARION BERGER
(RS 896 - May 23, 2002)
