Kimbra Puts The Golden Echo Under the Microscope

Brianne Nemiroff

In the year 2014, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” is now a song of the recent past. We remember it for winning three Grammys and making the singer a one-hit wonder. Gotye wasn’t the only artist along for the ride, however, with New Zealand native, Kimbra, featured on the multi-platinum track as well. Coincidentally, Kimbra’s debut album, Vows, was released three weeks after “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which propelled her popularity around the world. But as the sensation of the song died down, Kimbra realized that she also needed to be brought back down to earth. Seeing her face plastered up everywhere and hearing her name called out everyday put her in a place where she needed to find her center. She came across a poem about the Narcissus Golden Echo, more commonly known as the daffodil flower, and the idea for her latest project was born.

While the average person in the US finds inspiration from Pinterest quotes, it was refreshing to hear Kimbra talk about how she was so inspired by this one flower, and a poem about it.

“The poem had a beautiful quote about beauty and vanity. It said ‘how to keep beauty from vanishing away to give beauty back. Back, back, back.’ It was a quote about this idea of a flower this beautiful symbolism for giving back or returning beauty. Instead of beauty vanishing away by giving it back, restoring life. The Golden Echo is about being called outward and being engaged with the world around you and listening closely for details that at once seem mundane, and on the second time they have become a wealth of wisdom. The Narcissus Golden Echo is the one flower that is also about the side of going inward and how we can spend a lot of our lives being caught up in our heads.”

On her debut album, Vows, Kimbra played it safer with sounds more familiar to the American ear. It was more funky, more R&B, and with a more consistent groove. On The Golden Echo, she definitely takes you on a journey thematically, lyrically, and sonically.

“There was a quite a lack of concern for grid-like rhythm. I worked on drum programming in a very mathematical way. On this record, I would consciously go in and nudge this off the beat into a drunk-flow, so they felt like they breathed more, move in and out into a different one, it swung a bit more. That was my influence of R&B and soul that was more prevalent on this album. I had Bilal work on it.”

Besides being a part of the album, Bilal’s work was among the list of her latest influences, with others like Solange Knowles, The Dirty Protectors, and even modern classical composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

“[I was more interested in] people that were doing experimental R&B, people that were using colors from that genre but injecting their own psychedelia into it. There was a lot more of that going on than scouring the charts to see what was doing well at the time. I guess I’m not as interested in that. It’s more exciting to me to find stuff that isn’t already being explored in pop music, [to] try to find a way to bring those textures in and out.”

Kimbra is definitely an independent woman in the studio, but admits creating music is much easier for her when she has help from a producer outside of her forte. She looked to producer, Rich Costey (Foster the People, Interpol, Muse, The Mars Volta), for inspiration and to challenge herself.

“I was doing so much of [the album] at home, but I would hit these walls. I would keep running into these moments where I was too stuck inside my head and I would want someone to balance it out with, someone with an incredible wealth of knowledge of how to create dimension. Because there’s so many elements in my music, often I can throw all of it in there and it can sound so cluttered because everything is coming at you from one angle.

My favorite album in high school was by Mars Volta. They had so many things going on in their music, but it all had a place to sit; it all had a way of coming at you where it wasn’t too much. You could still digest it. Rich Costey mixed those albums. What was interesting to me was that he was more of a hippier and alternative rock producer. I was writing an R&B, future soul album. It interested me to find someone that was outside of [my world]. The role of a producer, in this sense we were co-producing the record, is helping me learn how to turn some things off, which is a hard thing to do as an artist because you get so attached to everything.”

Because of her early success, a lot of producers and musicians hoped to be a part of The Golden Echo, which led her to have her choice of who she felt was right for the album. This led her to use hand-picked musicians, instead of session musicians, and use them only for specific tracks where she felt their talent was needed.

“I wanted it all to have an intention and a purpose. Choosing musicians was very much about what the song needed, what it was missing emotionally, and who can I bring in to tell that story, to juxtapose that energy. If I had something that was sounding very sweet and fragile, I want to mess with it a bit. I want it to get tough.”

Despite the fact that her sound is such a fusion of genres from R&B and experimental rock to avant-garde and ambient music, her first single off The Golden Echo, “90s Music” is still somewhat of a leap even from her new sound. It seems to take an influence of songs from the 90s made popular by TLC or Missy Elliot, but Kimbra said that wasn’t the intended direction.

“It was never about trying to make a song that sounded like the 90s. It was [just] a song about embracing the spirit of being a teenager, being super fearless, falling in love for the first time, having this memory with a kid that you met, all you things you used to do together. I love that thought and that youthful energy, in terms of the writing of the song. On the one hand, you’re talking about 90s music. But on the other hand, you have a heavy hip-hop beat with really aggressive guitars. To me that was an exciting place for a song to go. It inhabits the spirit of experimentation which is a fun way to open this record, because this record is going to be a little ride!”

Since the release of “90s Music,” Kimbra has released two more songs, “Nobody But You” and  “Love in High Places,” both of which her voice shares a tonal resemblance to Macy Gray. But while the genres tend to jump around every other track, the cohesiveness lies in the overall story.

“Nothing [else on the record] sounds like ‘90s Music,’ but none of the other songs sound like each other. When I tried to choose a single, it was hard to choose one that would sum up the record. It has to be consumed as a full story. It starts off in one place about youth and 90s music, and it ends up with a song about partying with the world and going on to the afterlife. It really has to make sense in light of the whole narrative that’s been told through the story of the album.

The Golden Echo’s purpose is to inspire another artist down a similar experimental path, definitely not one to fit in with the Top 40. While her sound may not be expected, or even unexpected, it’s definitely an album that makes you think. Kimbra explores avenues that most artists wouldn’t dare to touch, and without her, music would only be a one-way street.

Kimbra‘s new album The Golden Echo will be released on August 19.