Elvis has inspired many a musician over the years, but rarely, if ever, in the way he catalyzed Virginian Karen Jonas. Watching an Elvis biography on the plane home from SXSW she was incited to write 8 songs in 8 days and add a few others pulled off the shelf from a previous writing spurt to create her latest album. The central theme to them was vintage kitsch and American consumerism, at least on the surface. Dig a little deeper though, and The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch, her seventh record, is more about the dark side of the equation when style triumphs over substance.
The opening exhibit of that thesis is Four Cadillacs, where buying someone a Cadillac substitutes for love. The song starts in a jump jazz style complete with horns and swing guitar before pivoting into a long blues vamp. It’s every bit as shiny as the chrome on those Caddy’s. There’s more of an Elvis thread in Shake Bump and Grind Show, a rock ballad about trying to control Elvis’ on-stage sexual attraction after using it to sell tickets to the show. Black Jacket Red Guitar isn’t necessarily about Elvis but rather the pantheon of stars where “stumbling on whiskey, paranoid on pills” accelerates the disconnection from reality. And then there’s the swampy sounding Call Dr. Nick who’s “got just what you need.”
The conspicuous consumption tie-in starts with Rich Man’s Valley, a roughly biographical examination of the Carter Family success where “nobody likes new money but we’re not here for the friendship.” They earned their high life, but that’s less so for the wife in Let’s Go to Hawaii where the goal is to get away from the kids and drink pina coladas at a pink-colored resort. It features a twangier side of Jonas’ voice over a Hawaiian guitar and beat. Think Polynesian country music. Online Shopping is a 50’s doo-wop, honky-tonk mashup about having to never leave home. That brings you to the next-to-last cut on the record, American Kitsch. Jonas drops a karma bomb here with a spoken word piece about all the trash leftover from the consumption, “forgotten but not gone.” The overall mood is rescued, perhaps for the better, perhaps not, with the final Buy, a folk song about trying to buy happiness.
A concept album, in this day and age of X and Shorts, seems a little contrarian. While The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch isn’t exactly a concept project, as a theme it affords Karen Jonas the chance to show her range, both lyrically and stylistically. For that we should be thankful because you’ll discover something new and delightful every time you listen to the record.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.