Celestial Blues does a lot more work than is readily available on the surface. It is immediately gratifying - the heavy moments are really heavy, catchy riffs and choruses drive the tracks, and the lyrics are seductive: “my name is Lucifer, nice to meet you.” At the same time, the distorted or loud moments never feel discordant, or like a surprise, because they map so cleanly to the emotional highs and lows of the song’s (and the album’s) structure. The characteristically doubled vocal technique makes the words both clear and mysterious in places, which sometimes feel like confessions in passing, especially as the music overwhelms them, or when words drop from stanzas as the spoken section is broken with emotion.
When I returned to 2017’s Created In The Image Of Suffering, I was surprised to find a sound palette that felt similar to Celestial Blues. There is a mixture of grunge-sounding distortion and heavy-fuzz sludginess that has been carried through all of King Woman’s releases, but now on tracks like “Boghz” are used as an emotional punch to the gut, whereas on many tracks from Created In The Image of Suffering, the fuzzy sound design was the primary element. It started songs and ended them - the emotional rise and fall of a track was much more dependent on the power of the vocals and the doomy quality to the guitar riffs. A reserve was taken when writing Celestial Blues, as if each element were put through more scrutiny before placed in a track, and the tracks themselves were arranged and rearranged until the entire runtime created a clear emotional experience.
In an interview with New Noise Magazine, Kris said:
“I was very angry in Doubt and Created in The Image of Suffering, and just working through a lot. With this, I was more interested in the character, because I wanted to tell more of their stories in a way, but also tie it in with my own personal experiences.”
This is most present on the track “Golgatha,” which starts in the way many of the songs start - a clean, but reverberated guitar, and a vocal section. In this case though, the lyrics will repeat and grow, giving the song a slowly escalating effect. “It never ends,” Kris speaks softly (later doubled, later with an elevated harmony, later against a wall of guitar distortion and cymbals, then with a scream behind it), “no, it never ends, the snake eats its tail and we return again to this hell.” The beat intensifies. More lyrics get added to the mantra, which continues to repeat without losing one ounce of emotional power. Then, when the tension is high and the mantra has lulled you along with the character, the guitars kick in and it’s huge. Big riffs. “This hell / this hell / I’ll return again with these scars, my friend / No, it never ends.”
It encapsulates what it’s like to be alive. Even when violins enter and the drums break down, releasing the tension and creating a moment of respite from the feeling of endless misery, the mantra has no other place to go but back into the rotation of the song. It slows down, it gets quieter, and the words fade with the rest of the song. Hell is the words that repeat in our heads and, like the emotional arc of this track, we may never return to that one loud moment in our lives, but that doesn’t mean it has gone away.
As a quick aside: as much as this album maps to the hopelessness of the last few years for me, it isn’t a pandemic record. In an interview with Beyond The Boy’s Club, Kris said:
“I wrote this record between projects and recorded it in December of 2019 [...] It’s been done for a while. I was taking my time with releasing, and I wasn’t in the mood to rush it. I took my time with the video and photos and just said, ‘I’m going to take my time.’”
The video she’s talking about, released alongside the single “Morning Star,” is a magical 360-single-shot with Kris at the center as the eponymous Morning Star. Directed by Muted Widows, and expertly staged, the video was well worth taking the time on. Of all the music videos I’ve seen this year, this was the most compelling. It encapsulated so much of what drew me to Kris’s performance style, but it also brought out a thriving character. Dancing, smoking, with slick-backed hair, Lucifer appears to bring you their message. About “Morning Star,” Kris said:
“We were told that Lucifer was so bad and evil, but I feel like oftentimes the people who are portrayed as bad guys in different stories or the news are not what they’re perceived to be, so I wanted to flip it on its head and make it something interesting. So, it’s Lucifer’s way of defending himself.”
The only track I don’t like on the album, which is purely personal taste and not at all a knock on the album, is “Psychic Wound,” which I feel is out of place in the scale and emotionality of the rest of the album. The psych elements are too far forward in the mix compared to the rest of the album. But psych-inspired music, in general, is not something I often listen to. At the third-to-last slot on the album, it doesn’t bother me. The front half is so, so strong, that it doesn’t affect my read on the album at all. “Ruse” comes on right after and I forget all about it. So, your mileage may vary.
Celestial Blues ends with “Paradise Lost,” which is a quiet and heartfelt song. I try to pay attention to the lyrics, which are often doubled and sometimes whispered, because they feel like deep wells of personal reflection. But all I can ever take away is the final line “it’s just the saddest story,” which comes as the final transition in the song, and the album. The words are devastating. As a reflection of the characters we’ve met on the album this line brings an end to the transformation of a life’s story - at least for now.
While digging into the different interviews, lyrics, and music videos for this album, it is clear that there is so much more context to the album than is immediately available on the surface. It rewards passive listeners, but also those who like to dig and find meaning in the additional content. I’m excited for people to find this record, and later, when it is safe, to see it played live, because I feel like it will be an all-time favorite in many circles. There’s so much to revisit.
Celestial Blues is the second full-length album from King Woman. Available now from Relapse Records.