With a tender, unhurried voice and lyrics filled with uncertainty, singer/songwriter Jens Kuross returns with ‘Crooked Songs,’ an album that leans into emotion fairly than straightforward solutions.
Stream: ‘Crooked Songs’ – Jens Kuross
Jens Kuross doesn’t provide options.
He’s not making an attempt to provide you closure, or readability, or the sort of lyrics you may cross-stitch onto a pillow. What he affords as an alternative is much much less tidy… and way more intriguing.
On his newest album, Crooked Songs, the Idaho-based singer/songwriter leans all the way in which into ambiguity. The songs are fantastically melodic, emotionally uncooked, and simply cryptic sufficient to make you lean in nearer. Some sound like late-night confessions; others learn like unsolvable riddles. All of them really feel like somebody talking their fact whereas nonetheless determining what it means.
“The songs are each extraordinarily private but in addition not personally particular,” Kuross says. “I’m extra eager about what the listener would possibly find out about themselves via them.”
That rigidity between intimacy and abstraction has at all times been a part of Kuross’ creative DNA. After years of performing with The Acid and collaborating with Ry X, he stepped out on his personal, releasing a handful of solo EPs earlier than delivering his full-length debut in 2020: Artwork! on the Expense of Psychological Well being, Vol. 1. It was a file that wore its vulnerability on its sleeve, a slow-burning dive into emotional honesty.
With Crooked Songs, Kuross, a former LA session musician, sharpens that imaginative and prescient. This album, which was written, recorded and combined in his residence in Boise, marks a noticeable shift: It’s much less structured, however extra emotionally exact. He leaves area to interpret, with out ever absolutely spelling issues out – like a dialog reduce off mid-sentence, it leaves you wanting extra.
Co-producer Hayden Pedigo as soon as described Kuross’ sound as “Arthur Russell-meets-Harry Nilsson,” which captures the avant-garde detours and the basic pop coronary heart beating beneath. Kuross doesn’t shrink back from that comparability. In actual fact, he leans in, clearly amused by it.
“I feel Hayden additionally mentioned I seemed like ‘Randy Newman-meets-Grouper,’ which I’d love much more,” he says.
It’s becoming. Crooked Songs lives in that hazy area between storytelling and soundscape; between understanding precisely what you are feeling and having no phrases for it in any respect. It’s an album that doesn’t demand your interpretation a lot as invite it. You’re not requested to “get it.” You’re requested to sit with it.
Throughout the file’s monitor record, Kuross circles large themes – love, loss, identification, resiliency – however by no means tries to land on a set reply.
These are songs for people who find themselves nonetheless figuring issues out.
Expertise the total file by way of our under stream, and peek inside Jens Kuross’ Crooked Songs with Atwood Journal as he goes track-by-track via the music and lyrics of his newest album!
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:: stream/buy Crooked Songs right here ::
:: join with Jens Kuross right here ::
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Stream: ‘Crooked Songs’ – Jens Kuross
:: Inside Crooked Songs ::
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“What I Miss Most of All”
Atwood Journal: Your lyrics repeat the concept of “leaving all these jealous days behind.” Was penning this track extra about letting go of an individual or letting go of the model of your self that existed in that relationship?
Jens Kuross: Good query. I don’t know. I can’t even let you know if it’s really a couple of romantic relationship or not. I by no means sit all the way down to compose with an agenda. So so far as lyrics go my unconscious is doing the heavy lifting 90% of the time, and this track is not any exception. All that’s to say that my relationship to my lyrics will not be all that totally different from that of somebody who’s simply heard the track for the primary time and is making an attempt to determine it out.
“No One’s Hiding from the Solar”
This track blends confrontation with inevitability. Whenever you wrote it, did “the solar” symbolize fact, penalties or one thing else completely?
Jens Kuross: I like how “The Solar” is offered so ambiguously on this track. It may be taken as both a supply of hope or of dread. Once more although, I got here to the lyrics with zero intentionality.
“Stereotype”
There’s a rigidity right here between religion, doubt and private accountability. How did you land on the metaphor of “stereo, stereo, stereotype” to seize that battle?
Jens Kuross: Properly, I’m not completely positive. The track appears to be coping with the questions and rigidity you talked about. I feel that the stereotype line is a pleasant means of affirming that there’s nothing unique or particular about these questions. They could appear heavy or profound, however everybody struggles with them. They’re so common that they’re stereotypical.
“Beggar’s Nation”
There’s sturdy imagery of “beggars by the properly” and “bleeding gasoline.” Did you envision this as a private reckoning, a social commentary or one thing else?
Jens Kuross: In all honesty I didn’t envision it as something. Once more, no agenda, zero intentionality. However I sat down to put in writing and what got here out got here out. I’m nonetheless figuring it out. There’s a not insignificant likelihood that listeners will resolve it earlier than I do.
“Hymn of Defeat”
There’s a quiet resilience within the perception that “what’s defeated me will someday be defeated.” Was this track primarily based on a particular expertise or extra of a lifelong philosophy?
Jens Kuross: This track is exclusive in that the entire thing got here to me in a short time, or not less than the lyrics did. I wrote like seven or eight stanzas in the midst of a pair hours. Usually that’d take me months or years even. So, I don’t know particularly what it was born out of however no matter it was my unconscious actually wanted to get it out.
“Inside Joke”
Whenever you wrote it, had been you considering of a particular “inside joke” from your personal life or is it extra of a metaphor for feeling unnoticed?
Jens Kuross: Listening to it retrospectively I hear somebody confused and perhaps even indignant about being on the skin trying in, but in addition questioning whether or not or not there is perhaps one thing quietly noble about being an outsider as properly.
“By no means One for Combating”
The refrain accepts loss and resilience. Do you see the narrator as somebody who’s at peace with letting go or somebody who’s nonetheless quietly holding on?
Jens Kuross: Listening to it now, the narrator appears to be at peace.
“Crooked Tune”
The chorus “to cease this world from altering me” seems like a manifesto. Do you consider this track as a defiance towards change or a means of preserving your truest self regardless of it?
Jens Kuross: To me, preserving your truest self however everyone seems to be welcome to seek out their very own which means.
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© Mark Oliver
an album by Jens Kuross
