Album Review: Madeline Kenney’s Perfect Sounds Make Perfect Shapes
If you know how to swim, submerging yourself into a pool, can be serene in surrounding yourself with what, technically, constitutes 97% of the human body. Sometimes, I wonder the water within us reacts to the water around us; an analogy I thought of throughout Madeline Kenney’s Perfect Shapes.
The irony of Kenney’s album being called Perfect Shapes is that it feels shapeless. It simply flows and currents like a symbiotic being; anchored into motion by emotion. Throughout the record, Kenney’s voice feels like a bulb; absorbing energy to lighten itself. Yet, we all know energy does not always pick up when we want it to. Hence, the emotiveness of her voice comes in sporadic whimpers, hums, and wails that represent the times we want “something,” even if a burst of adrenaline, to feel alive again.
“Nostalgia and pain, leaving and staying, seeing and appreciating what is beautiful and what hurts,” are the themes Madeline Kenney approaches in Perfect Shapes. Hence, the perfect irony of her music feeling shapeless. In life, we are all paradoxes; confounded by our ability to be happy and sad, all at once. Luckily, Kenney has the finespun vocals to sew the delicacy of such sentimental in-betweens. Her voice feels like footsteps on wet sand or handprints on cold glass; she somehow manages to leave an impression on stern, layered pieces. Yet, you cannot imagine anyone else singing to the tender contrasts of “Your Art,” “Overheard,” “Cut Me Off,” and “The Flavor of the Fruit Tree.” Kenney truly makes her art feel solely hers, and join the ranks of MANY indie songstresses singing to feeling as an action.
I am really excited to see more women “Joan Baezing” in this modern era. It is enriching and enlightening, to the human species, when we all get to partake and disperse our wisdom. This is especially true as more young women, like Madeline Kenney, create music that sings to human spirits: beyond their bodies. For More Information On Madeline Kenney Click Here.
