Photo Credit: Tonje Thilesen
“I wrote this at a moment I was witnessing the gory breakdown of several relationships/couples all at the same time,” Kirby explains. “I don’t really want to invoke the word “heteropessimism” here, but I guess it’s about something like it, or just about commitment in general. It all seems like such an incredibly risky idea? I’m feeling less dark about it these days but I also fell in love with someone recently, so have tried to think about it less.”
Originally from Spicewood, Texas, Kirby was living in Nashville when she started writing ‘Blue Raspberry’’s title track, the first of the album’s songs to take shape. “‘Blue Raspberry’ is the oldest song on the record. I began to write it a month or so before I realized, I think I’m queer,” she says. Together with producers Alberto Sewald and Logan Chung, Kirby looked to albums like Andy Shauf’s ‘The Party’ and Lomelda’s ‘Hannah’ as models for ‘Blue Raspberry’’s abundant but spacious gorgeousness. Many of the songs stemmed from a single page of lyrical fragments, words and phrases that kept their hold on Kirby even as she slipped them into multiple settings. Images repeat on different songs throughout the album: cubic zirconia gleaming at a woman’s throat, the lab-grown substitute indistinguishable from earth-crushed diamonds; salt crystallizing as seawater dries on reddened skin; teeth that shine in a grin and then bite till they bruise. These refrains and reprises lend a tight narrative cohesion to the record, elevating its sharp queries into all the unlikely shapes love takes as it surges through you.
“Why wouldn’t that be enough?” Kirby sings throughout the album, a question that’s never answered and never drops. Every attempt at love strains toward the idea of the real thing, that totalizing force that makes everything around it perfect forever. But if no one ever gets there, why wouldn’t the straining itself suffice? Blue Raspberry shivers with the idea that the key to the treasure is itself the treasure — even if it’s plastic, even if its gold coating flakes off at your touch, even if despite all your searching you never find the lock.
One week after the album’s release Kirby will embark on a nationwide tour that begins in Washington DC on February 3 and wraps around the country, ending back on the East coast at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on March 8. All upcoming dates are listed below.
TOUR DATES
Feb 3 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd #
Feb 4 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle – Back Room #
Feb 5 – Asheville, NC @ Eulogy #
Feb 7 – Nashville, TN @ The Blue Room at Third Man Records #
Feb 8 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade – Purgatory #
Feb 9 – Jackson, MS @ Hal & Mal’s #
Feb 11 – Dallas, TX @ Sons of Hermann Hall #
Feb 13 – Austin, TX @ The Ballroom #
Feb 15 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress #
Feb 16 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room #
Feb 17 – West Hollywood, CA @ The Roxy Theatre #
Feb 18 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop #
Feb 19 – Sacramento, CA @ Goldfield Trading Post #
Feb 21 – Portland OR @ Polaris Hall #
Feb 22 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza #
Feb 23 – Walla Walla, WA @ Billsville West #
Feb 24 – Boise, ID @ Shrine Basement #
Feb 25 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court #
Feb 27 – Denver, CO @ Hi Dive #
Feb 29 – Omaha, NE @ Reverb Lounge #
Mar 1 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry #
Mar 2 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon #
Mar 3 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall #
Mar 5 – Detroit, MI @ The Sanctuary #
Mar 6 – Pittsburgh, PA @ The Warhol Entrance Space #
Mar 7 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s #
Mar 8 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom #
# – with Allegra Krieger
Pre-Order ‘Blue Raspberry’
1. Redemption Arc
2. Fences
3. Cubic Zirconia
4. Hand to Hand
5. Wait Listen
6. Drop Dead
7. Party of the Century
8. Alexandria
9. Salt Crystal
10. Blue Raspberry
11. Table
https://kirbykaty.com/
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