Dreaming of Revenge is just plain weird

King’s new album seems incomplete.

By Jess Camp

Published March 7, 2008

Kaki King’s new album, Dreaming of Revenge, is quite different than the average CD sitting on the shelves at your local record store. Though, after listening to it, I’d say the main difference is that it has a longer shelf life than other discs. And while most of the songs don’t have lyrics, some do. King seems unable to make up her mind about what genre she is striving for.

It’s really a shame she didn’t make a choice. This album sounds only partially complete. It’s like she laid down the music score thinking they’d come up with great, envy-inspiring lyrics.

But she must have felt that was too hard and just decided to scrap the whole lyric idea. Lyrics are so yesterday.

The songs that actually feature singing are interesting. King’s voice is soft and pensive, like she’s really thinking about what she’s saying. But even when the songs have words, the words are few in number and not really enough to give this CD anything worth listening to.

In the song “Life Being What It Is,” King’s voice is especially nice. She sounds like she’s young, but feels like she’s older. It’s like she’s trying to convey wisdom beyond her years in the lyrics. But the wisdom is just silly, really, and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. “You put a note in my pocket, said be good to yourself/And that was all,” is what this track’s message is focused on. I guess she didn’t like the note and goes on to say she feels the need to get revenge, but that everyone feels that way sometimes.

She also promises not to call if she sees him in her mind.

Well, OK, why would you have to make that promise? Maybe she’s the type who calls every half-hour just to check in or something.

Another song with lyrics is “2 O’Clock.” Her voice sounds normal at first, but as it goes on some kind of a whispery echo emerges behind her, which says everything she just did only with a half-second delay. It’s really creepy and makes you feel like some pervert is leaning over your shoulder and blowing in your ear. The meaning in this song is a little hard to decipher.

Here is the opening stanza: “Two o’clock you’re still sleeping/When you wake up/You’ll be in such pain/And I wait with the plate, piled high with my love/That you won’t eat from.”

Is he in pain because she stabbed him? Is he hurting because he just had liver failure? Or maybe she’s a stalker and she’s been at his bed all day waiting for him to wake up, only to know in her heart that he’ll never love her back because she’s a weird stalkerpsycho.

Perhaps the song has more depth than that, but a little further into the song, she sings a couple of lines that help prove the stalker theory: “There’s no need to be so terrible/When you know I would do anything for you.” If you read that lyric and then put a maniacal laugh behind it and imagine Smithers saying it to Mr. Burns, it becomes doubly disturbing.

This album is a waste of labor.Maybe with a little more effort or more lyrics it could have been salvaged. The singer really does have a kind of charming voice, but it is nowhere near enough to be this album’s saving grace.