Natasha Kmeto can't get
no satisfaction, and it's killing her. As a singer raised on both the
come-ons of '90s R&B and the all-night throb of house and trip-hop,
the 30-year-old future-soul producer-songwriter can fog up windows
without even trying. But her second album is called Crisis for a
reason: Recorded in a year fraught with personal upheaval, the record
doesn't writhe in ecstasy so much as in the ache of being deprived of
it. On her last two EPs, Kmeto pierced the glitched-out rhythms and
Richter-shifting bass of modern EDM with vocal hooks straight off an
Aaliyah greatest-hits set. Here, the beats feel hollowed out, infused
with strobing synths, finger snaps and a blacklight moodiness worthy of
the Italians Do It Better crew, and Kmeto fills the sparse atmosphere
with striking directness, pleading for affection ("Take Out"),
detachment ("Last Time") and the time to get her shit together ("Idiot
Proof"). Even "Morning Sex," with its airy pianos and resting-heartbeat
pulse, feels like an elegy to intimacy rather than a roll in postcoital
bliss. Crisis is still the sexiest album that'll come out of
Portland this year, but the pleasure is wrapped in the pain of
longing—which, of course, only makes it sexier.
SEE IT: Natasha Kmeto plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., with Grown Folk, Ben Tactic and Lincolnup, on Saturday, June 22. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
WWeek 2015