“Mr. Dynamite,” the first song off Killer Kin’s latest (and self-titled) album, starts with a churning two-note riff that acts as a distillation of the band’s whole approach to making music — raw, propulsive, and sexy. When the rest of the band slams in to kick up the energy a few more notches, it feels like a promised fulfilled. The singer’s barked vocals culminate in a bare-bones, ruthlessly effective chorus: “dynamite’s coming, you better run / dynamite’s coming, you better hide / dynamite coming, you better run.” It’s a warning that you don’t want to listen to, because the explosion of the rest of the album is worth sticking around for.
Killer Kin — Matt Lea on vocals, Chloe Rose on rhythm guitar, Brady Wilson on lead guitar, Marco Carotenuto on bass, and Jason Kyek on drums — have been tearing up stages in New Haven and well beyond ever since their charging debut in 2019. There have been a few personnel changes in the years since, but the songwriting team of Lea and Rose (Lea writes the lyrics, Rose writes the music) remains fully intact, and if anything, better than ever. Their strength lies in their simplicity, and like a couple other New Haven-area bands that have emerged from the pandemic shutdown, they really know how to have fun.
So the second song, the driving “On the Chain,” starts with the sound of an actual chain on the backbeat before the back rocks it out (chorus: “you really got me on your chain,” sung with just the right mix of heartache and BDSM lust). “Stunner” opens with Rose’s and Wilson’s guitars richocheting back and forth before getting down to business. “Hound Howl” is even more ferocious, setting the stage for everything else that’s coming: one rock ‘n’ roll onslaught after another. It perhaps reaches a peak with “Needles and Knives” (“you’re pulling needles / I’m feeling knives”), featuring a wall of distortion built on a galloping drum, even if “Shock Collar” remains with Lea literally barking his way through it and “Cross That Line” is a sprint to the finish.
There are bands that vary up the speeds and sounds of their songs on their albums to make for a journey of twists and turns. Killer Kin succeeds by doing the exact opposite. The effect of the album is a bit like driving a car straight down a long highway at night, starting at 80 miles an hour and just getting faster from there. It’s just dangerous enough to be a blast, and it’s easy to imagine the band making waves wherever it goes. “Everybody knows that I’m a star,” Lea sings on “Stunner.” It’s easy to believe him.
Where Killer Kin is all about tearing a blazing path through the musical landscape, the New Haven-based Zaaqqara is about exploring the byways. She’s a “multi-instrumentalist with a background in songwriting, composition and jazz bass. As a black female artist who feels confined by stereotypical assumptions, her intention is to create visual and auditory art that is entirely open to interpretation.”
Impasto, which has received a slow rollout across a few platforms and recently appeared on Bandcamp (where it is easiest to funnel money directly to artists), is a thoroughly satisfying expression of those intentions. The opening cut, “Trance,” is anchored by distant guitar lines that give the song a strong pulse. Over this, Zaaqqara floats layers of vocals that unfurl flowing sheets of ideas, both lyrical and musical, detailing an episode of heartbreak and abuse of power (“build me up and break me down / sometimes it’s better when you’re not around,” she sings) that is emotionally direct yet elliptical in its imagery. The next cut, “Saturn’s Rings,” bobs on a relaxed polyrhythm and soothing pads of keyboards. Together they suggest a laid-back sound for the album.
That suggestion, however, is disrupted by the next track, “Linoleum,” which locks together crunchy electric guitar with sparse percussion to produce a groove that lets the listener strut through the first half of the song, before it dissolves into a cloud of gentle rhythms and cooing vocals that feel like a remedy to the tension in the song’s first half, even as those voices keep searching.
By the time “Scrabble” and “Rattlesnake Roads” have had their turn, Zaaqqara has carved out a musical space for herself in which elements of several genres — rock, jazz, R&B, pop — coexist quite happily. Zaaqqara takes whatever musical elements are needed to express what’s needed, refreshingly, without worrying about it. Gluing it all together is the warm of her voice, the strength of her melodic ideas, and lyrics that offer a trail to follow, one that suggests Zaaqqara is moving from darkness to light, and teaching us to do the same. The bubbly rhythm of “Trip” is an apt closer, bringing Impasto to a catchy conclusion, even as it washes out in the end, with a wink, like sand thrown in a musical ocean.
Killer Kin’s self-titled album and Zaaqqara’s album Impasto are both available on Bandcamp.
