Description
Kee Avil’s music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer’s 2022 debut LP Crease, with its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop, prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. There’s a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to new album Spine, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time’s passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elementsguitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee’s voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. “We’re shaped by many versions of ourselves,” says Avil. “I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn’t end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past.” For fans of: PJ Harvey, Mica Levi, Eartheater, SOPHIE, FKA Twigs, Shygirl, Juana Molina, Hyd, Scott Walker.
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