I used to cry all the time. But somewhere between being a sobbing
teenage malcontent and a content record-scamming twenty-some, I dried
up. Now films where dogs have to be killed by the boys that love them
or girls are lovingly raped by their dads or peacemaker mums get
inoperable cancer just make me cringe, like the filmmaker's trying so
hard, wanting to bully the audience into weeping away. And I ain't
buying it. And, so, while I'm in such a state, along comes I'm
Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean, the solo album from Kimya Dawson
from the Moldy Peaches. From silly, scrappy, scatalogical scuzz-toned
comedy-rock duo the Moldy Peaches. Dawson being the girl in the duo
who wears the bunnysuit on stage and sings things like "Who's got the
crack?" The one who, on their latest single, says "Remember the time
you fucked the jelly?" and "After this, you wanna go shit in a
condom?". And, so, on such a solo record, on comes a song called
"Reminders of Then." And my drought ends, so to speak. Over the
simplest of guitar chords, and through a fog of four-track tape-hum,
there's Dawson, singing softly, minus any self-conscious comedy.
Singing a chorus that's beautiful and funny and sad and simple and
mystical and romantic at once. Singing "Why am I surprised?/ Lies
and bullshit, and bullshit and lies/ You'd think I'd give up after so
many tries/ My finger's on the trigger and my eyes are on the prize."
And it's enough to make a grown man, or at least some post-adolescent
facsimile, shed a few quiet tears. Most unexpectedly, it's an
earnest, entirely pretty song. And, most unexpectedly, it comes in an
album that is almost entirely filled with such graceful exercises in
strummed quietude. It's eye-opening, or, I guess, ear-opening, stuff
— akin to first hearing Julie Doiron outside of Eric's Trip,
even if the gap between band/solo isn't quite as pronounced in this
case. I mean, Dawson hasn't really wandered far from the
push-play-and-record lo-fidelity anti-folk of her main digs. It's
just that it's all so quiet. And beautiful. And, save for a 90-second
montage of children called "Stinky Stuff," there's not much here that
isn't singer/songwriterish. Even when the record kicks out with
something close to Moldy Peaches wackiness, it never rocks, never
gets raucous, and never gets totally absurdist. And after Adam
Green's solo debut essentially magnified the Peaches' prurience in
its stripped-down setting, Dawson's solo deliverance of such
prettiness and nakedness and sweetness and earnestness is even more
striking.
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