{"product_id":"spine","title":"Spine","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe follow-up to Kee Avil's acclaimed 2022 debut Crease: \"A stunning debut\" (The\r\nQuietus); \"A whiplash style of uninhibited exploration\" (The Wire); \"Kee Avil's debut is a\r\nforce\" (Foxy Digitalis); \"A work of Frankensteinian wonder\" (Electronic Sound); \"A tightly\r\ncoiled, finely wrought vision of avant-pop\" (Exclaim); \"A debut of fiendish creativity\"\r\n(Bandcamp Album Of The Day \/ Albums Of The Year)\r\nKee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and\r\nemotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease\r\ngarnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking\r\nup a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of\r\nThe Year along the way. It's intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge\r\ntake on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin.\r\nA remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought\r\ncollaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs.\r\nWith Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much\r\nrawer sound. She calls it folk-and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music\r\nthat reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and\r\nreal-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences.\r\nThere's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing\r\nof melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent\r\nhooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay\r\ncrop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements-guitar,\r\nelectronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front.\r\nWithin this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key\r\nto the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. \"We're shaped by many versions\r\nof ourselves,\" says Avil. \"I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could\r\nhave been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that\r\nthrough time. Seeing the future, the past.\"\r\nSpine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease\r\nand working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal\r\nexperimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who\r\ncontinues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went\r\ninto making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months-a process that may also be a\r\nfactor in it's intensity and sharpness: \"This record was much harder, like it was really\r\ndiscovering everything from scratch.\" In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the\r\nsound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare\r\nback songs against her usual instincts.\r\nSometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really\r\nare. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic,\r\nit hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much\r\ntime in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar\r\nbends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There\r\nis something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's\r\nown feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most\r\nimportant things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next\r\nstep forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on it's own, a\r\nbracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in\r\nbeing human. - jj skolnik\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alliance Entertainment","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48761522258225,"sku":"666561017811","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0704\/2026\/7313\/files\/4305604-3123290.jpg?v=1712616738","url":"https:\/\/vinyl.com\/products\/spine","provider":"Vinyl.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}