KRISTINA MOORE it is who guises as koleżanka for her particular lusciously free, electronica- and folksily informed guitar music; and the New York-via-deepest Arizona songstress will surely be tempting her into your world via the conduit of her debut album, set for release at the end of July.
Combining elements of retrotronica, a lo-fi modular rhythm section, Americana-pop melodies and a voice that lofts and swoops with all the easy natural talent of St Vincent, bent away from a glammy future pop and into empathetic warmth, “In A Meeting” brings the epiphany to the day-to-day, zeroes in with beauty.
Her first full-length release, Place Is, on space, place, and the conceptual non-place, as outlined by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard; the modern places we inhabit in the moving through, such as the conference room, the hotel reception, the airport lounge or bus terminal; temporary homes, resonant in their transience – those place understood by by truckers, deckhands, flight attendants and frequent fliers, and by touring musicians.
Kristina’s sensitivity to such in-between places began when she moved from Arizona up to New York and then, barely unpacked, immediately hit the road, spending every weeknight in a different club around the country, at once continually moving and in stasis.
Before the Big Apple she’d called the ranching town of West Phoenix, Arizona home, where she shared her house with scorpions and coyotes roamed; and where her grandfather’s polka club was the centre of her universe.
Giving up on piano lessons her first musical home was her local Catholic church, where she fell in love with the transcendence of the hymns. A first blooding in the high school band led to a year songwriting and gigging from a base in Omaha.
She became koleżanka five years ago; it translates from the Polish as colleague or acquaintance, and is a wry comment on the competitive, macho music scene that she was moving through, bonding with the women she came across. “We were a minority presence, instant colleagues”, she says. One whirlwind year with NYC indie outfit Triathlon and she’s out on her own again.
Which is no bad thing, if what we’ve herd is anything to go by; an album full of beautifully judged melody, trilling vocals and observational acuity awaits.
koleżanka’s Place Is will be released digitally, on cassette and on vinyl by Bar/None on July 30th and is available to pre-order right now, over at Bandcamp.
