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Underground > Radio & Music >

Kendall

23:54 / 23.08.06

(Firstoff, apologies if this guy is really well known in the US or generally; I'm still giddy with the joy of 'discovery'. Let me down gently, won't you?)

I posted about Kendall Kelly on the YouTube thread, having stumbled across his videos when searching for 'gay bear music' or somesuch. I've since been inspired to download his 'best of' collection, Re-Kindled, and it's really exciting me - partly because it's still a comparitive novelty to find decent artists who write well and unequivocally about elements of The Gay Experience (yes, I know), and partly because he does pop so damn well.

(WARNING: LINKS TO NOISY YOUTUBE MUSIC VIDEOS.)

Heterosexual Sex, for example, elegantly makes the point that hetero amour is almost never 'examined' in the same way as homo sex - and does so via an exquisitely silly, funny pop song that recalls Devo, Buggles, and all manner of forgotten '80s almost-hits.

Hip Hop Dykes is pastiche-that-transcends-pastiche, with a faintly ZZ Top video. I like it because it's essentially a song by a gay man about liking (a specific subgroup of) lesbians. How often does that happen?

I Don't Need Your Permission To Love And To Fuck sounds like it was born of sheer anger at Bush administration's use of gay marriage/civil partnership as a political bargaining token.

Flesh reminds me of something really obvious, but I can't quiiite put my finger on it. Can anyone help me out here?

The 'best of' album is a bit of a mix, quite Prince-influenced in places (The Booty Song) and replete with acute pieces of social observation that are unusually... earthy coming from a gay artist (Hot Drunk Guys - about taking advantage of inebriated straight frat-boys - and I Get Dumb, about how inarticulate we become in the throes of orgasm). He seems a talented guy who's still not quite found his direction. I reckon he ought to be supporting the Scissor Sisters on their next UK tour (whenever that should be).

Aaanyway, mucho gushiness. Can any of the US crowd tell me any more about Kendall? How well known is he Stateside?

01:11 / 24.08.06

This sounds fantastic, and it sucks because youtube is down for maintenance now!

06:35 / 24.08.06

It's back up again now. And some of these are downloadable from Kendall's own site.

I know it's invidious to keep referring to gay artists to describe other gay artists, but his stuff makes me think of the Scissor Sisters if they'd been influenced by Prince rather than Elton John or the Bee Gees - and his voice is like Andy Bell from Erasure's, on a particularly good day.

Kiltartan Cross

16:05 / 24.08.06

Oh, I like it, he brung a smirk to my face. Thanks for the heads-up.

(Flesh sounds to me like someone rapping over the theme tune to Swiv. But I imagine that's not what you had in mind.)

19:14 / 24.08.06

With Flesh, I'm afraid I'm probably thinking of the soundtrack to Grease, with "grease is the way we are feeling", etc. as in "flesh is the way we feel, flesh is the love we steal". The fact that he's a big lovely fount of beary flesh doesn't hurt...

21:18 / 25.08.06

Oh, now I am totally going to have the 'heterosexual sex/in various states of undress' refrain going through my head next time I sleep with a woman. Great.

That one's easily my favourite of the songs, and totally hilarious. Hip Hop Dykes kinda rubs me the wrong way, like its too easily assimilable to a kind of gay male misogyny. Flesh is hot, though.

22:09 / 25.08.06

Hip Hop Dykes was the first thing of his I saw/heard, and I know what you mean. I think the reason it slipped under my 'girl-on-girl action for het men' irritationdar is that, since coming to London, I've got to know various South London black women with attitude (a subgroup y'don't encounter much in relatively white Scotland) and find myself in fascinated admiration of them. In that context, I'm reading Kendall's homage as sincere, and that kind of overrides the negative connotations for me.

Heterosexual Sex seems like something of a development of his style. The album's more along the lines of Flesh, overall. As with the Scissor Sisters, I start off getting hooked on the 'up' tracks (The Booty Song, Hot Drunk Guys, I Get Dumb) then get pulled into the less immediate stuff (One Sex, In Suburbia, What If). Permission seems something of an anomaly to me, more rough and ready than his other stuff, less lyrically 'crafted'. I'm assuming that's because it was written in anger.

But yeah, glad you like him. I'm in that first evangelical flush of infatuated 'discovery', which reminds me of how I consumed music in my teens and makes me feel young and lovely.

22:48 / 25.08.06

You always feel young and lovely. But then I'm not that choosy.