Kimya Dawson Tonight at the Music Hall of Williamsburg

Posted at 11:33 AM, July 2, 2008

Kimya Dawson, "Loose Lips" (MP3)

The venue's bigger (thanks, Juno!), and the crowd will likely skew younger, but let no one forget that Kimya Dawson was a local long before she helped make Diablo Cody famous. She is apparently unchanged by all the attention—her plans for a new, market-resistant suite of children’s songs, entitled Alphabutt, continue apace—and reportedly still ends most shows, no matter how large, with an audience-wide group hug. A pact with fellow Moldy Peach Adam Green to not play the duo’s old songs is mostly honored, so no “Anyone Else,” unless, of course, Green shows up—which he might. More likely, though, things will tilt toward the PG—expect a set appropriate for Panda Delilah, Dawson’s two-year-old and newest tour mate. With Paleface, Levy, and Graham Wilkinson & the Underground Township. — ZACH BARON

9 p.m., $20. Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N 6th St., Brooklyn, 718-486-5400. Tickets still available here.

PREVIOUSLY
Robert Christgau on the Moldy Peaches

Hugs and Kisses #43: Kimya Dawson Plays a Gig

Posted by Everett True at 10:48 AM, May 13, 2008

Another week, another run-on sentence from Mr. Everett True, Australia-bound "roving ambassador" of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics. . .

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Everett files a column on time

PLUS: Kimya Dawson and Your Heart Breaks play a gig.

So before the show, I go up to Kimya and tentatively say hi, and Kimya says, “Hello again,” and I’m like, “I’m supposed to be introducing you tonight or something, do you want me to” (because my name is writ all over the posters large, like KIMYA DAWSON + SUPPORT + MC EVERETT TRUE and I had no idea until I got to the venue), and she’s like, “Well I don’t know, you’re not going to be a dick are you?” (because I guess Kimya used to read me back when I was music editor at The Stranger in Seattle) and I’m like, “Well, no, that’s when I write, when I’m performing I’m real nice,” and she’s like, “I’ve never seen you perform”, and all the while Clyde from Your Heart Breaks is standing kinda gawky and nervous to one side, having lost her voice wowing the gals at Ladyfest in London the previous night. So we kinda agree that as long as I don’t live up to my “dick” billing I can intro each artist, and so I get to chatting with Clyde a little and she tells me her band is normally more than just herself, but it’s kinda easier to travel this way, and that she plays with Karl Blau, and dude, I totally rate Karl’s gentle, dub-textured Olympian wonderment—and she compliments me on some book or other I wrote …

And now I’m on stage, and the light is blinding my eyes so I can’t see a single face, and I’m telling the audience in the red velvet plush of Brighton’s coolest art house cinema Duke Of Yorks how, if they have stuff to do in the interval, they should do it quickly cos Kimya wants to go on earlier than advertised cos there’s a strict curfew and she wants to play a little longer. And I mutter something about “…lady from my um, favourite city, Seattle…” (I lie) and Clyde is on stage, and she’s utterly charming in her awkwardness and glasses, hugging the guitar like a patchwork cat with a broken heart, banging the amps to layer percussion upon percussion, singing off-mic and eloquent, simple odes to the cornfields and space trips to the moon, a tremor of guitar here, just a bounced vocal there, and she’s telling us how cool the Dolphin Race on the pier is (but isn’t it? It’s always been the coolest attraction in this over-hyped resort), and now she’s decided to go for broke with “God Speed John Glen” and tempt Brighton into making spaceship noises and counting down as she takes a trip into outer space and the moon, talking ‘bout how happy the Americans were to kick Russkie ass, and her songs are all jarring and off-key but more poignant for it, and she hugs her cat, strike that, guitar, even closer and Kimya walks up on stage to take a seat, and accompany her on quite a disturbing number really, seems to be about escaping free of the stigma of parental abuse (I could be wrong, I often mishear Americans)…

And now I’m on stage again, telling a story ‘bout how we took our young son Isaac to see Kimya last time she played Brighton, at a community centre, and how he occupied most of his and our time by tickling us from behind, and how he’s at an Essex farm today (I gesticulate, and merge the choices – “Farm…Kimya. Farm…Kimya. I don’t know. I kinda like the choice I made”) and a few people laugh nervously, but none of them are half as nervous as Kimya, what with a notorious journalist dick introducing her, and a beloved film director in the crowd, and a spotlight in her face, keeping her separated from the audience, and her worry over whether “too cool for school Brighton” will want any of her “poop” songs…and hence the first 30 minutes is astonishing – bleak, depressed, totally insular, oblivious and shorn of any interaction sure, but astonishing and intense and kinda worrying as she sings of death and travel and the Puget Sound…and the next 30 are totally fun, as she responds to demand and gives us the poop (in particular, the Alphabet Poop Song) and some of those damnably tricky fast ones like Jeffrey Lewis on amphetamine that hurt her pinkie as she plucks, and she leads the audience through some of the best animal impersonations this side of Isaac being a seagull…and she even does a few requests and sings that lovely one about how she’s never met a Tobi she doesn’t like…

And by the end, she’s even thanking me for not being a dick from onstage, and so I tell her of course that I’m going to go home and write about it all and not even be a dick then. But I lied.

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Five albums I’m thinking of writing future columns about. Any requests? Email me at everett@planbmag.com

1. Nico Muhly, Mothertongue
I think the phrase “bedroom community” is a beautiful, evocative phrase.

2. Metronomy, Nights Out
Dude. It’s like there’s a party in my ears, and everyone’s invited.

3. Paper Bird, Cryptozoology
Hand-crafted, lyrical, female. Three of my favourite musical forms.

4. Slow Down Tallahassee, The Beautiful Light
My radio sweethearts from Sheffield finally release a full-length. I am ready to swoon.

5. Bunch of independent records from Tasmania
Sardonic and isolated. Ever tell you ‘bout the time I saw The Blair Witch Project in Hobart? Don’t ask.

Kimya Dawson, Conan, Whoopie, Tonight at Soundfix

Posted by Camille Dodero at 2:50 PM, January 15, 2008

photo from Sunday's Southpaw show by Cary Conover

So no Moldy Peaches on the Conan O'Brien Show last night. As mentioned here, Kimya Dawson and Adam Green had accepted an invitation for another 'reunion' on Monday night's show. ("How could we say no to that weirdo?" Kimya wrote on her LiveJournal. "Conan. Holy shit.") That enthusiasm waned when a "wise man named John Darnielle" reminded her that there was this little ongoing thing called a writer's strike and Conan O'Brien was one of those late-nighters who'd gone back to work without his joke-scribblers. "I am not interested in crossing picket lines," Dawson wrote. "Playing outside for those picketing, YES."

Instead, expectant viewers got Conan trapped in a conversation with a granny sexpert who babbled about turning into household items like electric toothbrushes and cell phones and into sex toys. (Switch your cell to vibrate, put it down your pants, and then wait for someone to call. Yup.)

So Kimya didn't cross picket lines to meet Conan. But next Monday, she gets to meet Whoopi Goldberg when she appears on the View. In her words: "[I]t's pants poopin time."

Which brings us to, well, Rob Harvilla's piece in this week's black-and-white about Kimya, her Sunday afternoon Southpaw show, her fortuitous appearance on the Juno soundtrack, and her recent obsession with preschool scatology:

But as a solo entity since relocated to Seattle, Kimya has flourished by regressing even further, and her Southpaw set hits its stride with a string of children’s songs that sound like they were written by children as well. Farts are a major motif: There’s an alphabet song in which E stands for “elephant farts,” S for “stink,” T for “turd,” U for “uh-oh,” and Z for “farts that smell like the zoo.” The killer, in fact, is “The Smoothie Song,” in which a pregnant Kimya (she’s now got a daughter named Panda Delilah, which I couldn’t have made up in a million years) demands a smoothie because she’s scared that her unborn child hasn’t moved in awhile, and smoothies reliably create a sensation “like a fart in a tub inside of me.” [Read the rest here]

Tonight Kimya's playing the Juno soundtrack release party at Sound Fix Records, 110 Bedford Avenue, 8pm, free, all-ages. Then tomorrow, she headlines Europa, 98 Meserole Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Better bring a change of Underoos!