1. Kimbra is just so good at those spacious and cold mysterious noir jazz songs the Aotearoa Film Commission should have her over scoring a film or two.
(I think the one thing that ties all her albums+mixtapes together is that reverence for the marriage of the pop-melodic with ambient-cinematic in a time of atonal scoring.)
2. Now what I hope to point out is that in the late 2000s, early 2010s the downtempo genre had many contemporaries in this style merging the atmospheric and melodic.
Even Beyonce, JT did their take on 4, and 20/20 Experience.
A close contemporary to Kimbra's style besides Gotye was Bic Runga (Listening For The Weather), Bjork, Royksöpp (Melody AM), Fat Freddy's Drop, and especially- to me- Yukimi Nagano of Koop (Bright Nights, Baby, Pieces Of You, Blues Alley).
But this style suddenly disappeared during the streaming era when the tolerance for slower tracks with structure got replaced with loopable tracks in lo-fi. Kimbra's contemporaries too. In fact, Yukimi Nagano and maybe Fat Freddy's Drop aren't even making music anymore.
3. This makes Kimbra one of the only still true artists of this style of lounge pop as its seen with her collab with Toth, alongside Toth.
And I also feel this coincides with the interdialogue between past Kimbra and future Kimbra written recently.
So to wrap this up,
Kimbra just nails the marriage of pop melody with cinematic noirish atmosphere (but unlike the haters who don't really know what they want in music except spouting "technical proficiency" or pseudo-industry mumbo) ,
I hope she continues this journey with herself and others Kimbra has met along the way who can pull that vision of introspective but magical burst of jazz, lounge, and candy colored pop as she did with many of Vows, 90s Music, Miracle, Nobody But You, and TBH-- a number from Idols and Vices... this time without losing one's magic to streaming platform anti-ontological loop structurelessness.
Also shoutout to The Bird and The Bees, I think Kimbra and Taylor Graves collabing with Inara and George (fun fact: Kimbra and George did collab at Track 14, 15 of Vows!) would be melodic lounge pop magic.
👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 👏🏽 🎊 🎉 BEST NEWS EVER!!! ASIDE FROM WACIPI TODAY ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 💜 💜
This was so fun and quirky! I loved it!! I’m intrigued by the glove wearing even though the song is about touching.
1. Kimbra is just so good at those spacious and cold mysterious noir jazz songs the Aotearoa Film Commission should have her over scoring a film or two.
(I think the one thing that ties all her albums+mixtapes together is that reverence for the marriage of the pop-melodic with ambient-cinematic in a time of atonal scoring.)
2. Now what I hope to point out is that in the late 2000s, early 2010s the downtempo genre had many contemporaries in this style merging the atmospheric and melodic.
Even Beyonce, JT did their take on 4, and 20/20 Experience.
A close contemporary to Kimbra's style besides Gotye was Bic Runga (Listening For The Weather), Bjork, Royksöpp (Melody AM), Fat Freddy's Drop, and especially- to me- Yukimi Nagano of Koop (Bright Nights, Baby, Pieces Of You, Blues Alley).
But this style suddenly disappeared during the streaming era when the tolerance for slower tracks with structure got replaced with loopable tracks in lo-fi. Kimbra's contemporaries too. In fact, Yukimi Nagano and maybe Fat Freddy's Drop aren't even making music anymore.
3. This makes Kimbra one of the only still true artists of this style of lounge pop as its seen with her collab with Toth, alongside Toth.
And I also feel this coincides with the interdialogue between past Kimbra and future Kimbra written recently.
So to wrap this up,
Kimbra just nails the marriage of pop melody with cinematic noirish atmosphere (but unlike the haters who don't really know what they want in music except spouting "technical proficiency" or pseudo-industry mumbo) ,
I hope she continues this journey with herself and others Kimbra has met along the way who can pull that vision of introspective but magical burst of jazz, lounge, and candy colored pop as she did with many of Vows, 90s Music, Miracle, Nobody But You, and TBH-- a number from Idols and Vices... this time without losing one's magic to streaming platform anti-ontological loop structurelessness.
Last shoutout (for now) to Stereolab, who I highly recommend is given a listen for their new 2025 album "Instant Holograms On Metal Film": https://youtu.be/Nndpg90P2O8?si=Kwv8nwgeXpXmm523
and one track of Yukimi Nagano: https://youtu.be/g-qZj_ajN5s?si=tNhfr3Ey8RHhUNXi
Also shoutout to The Bird and The Bees, I think Kimbra and Taylor Graves collabing with Inara and George (fun fact: Kimbra and George did collab at Track 14, 15 of Vows!) would be melodic lounge pop magic.