Karla Schickele formed Beekeeper with her brother Matthew and also has been the bass player in Ida for the past five years. Beekeeper was a pretty decent band that made a pretty decent album named Ostrich. Ida is a popular band, even once flirting with a major label before some sort of fiasco happened. I never fell in love with Ida, however, as I could never hear anything in their music other than some Prince covers and pretty vocals.
Much like Ida, I don't hear much in Schickele's solo music (under the name K.) that is well done except for the vocals. In the case of K., though, the music is that much more simplistic, and her voice alone is not enough to overcome those limitations and make the music at all enjoyable. New Problems is a pretty appropriate title for the album as her first foray into writing songs on her own is quite problematic.
K.'s palate is far too limited. All she has is bass, drums, and basic piano. Some rudimentary use of other instruments is added as well as a few low-key guest performances. In all, though, there is not much sound (let alone enjoyable sound) on this record other than Schickele's voice. So Schickele sings as loud as she can, sounding like some sort of lame new age folk singer, only K. has little to sing about and little knowledge about how to sing a lyric in an interesting way.
When she assembles a whole band, like on "Play By the Book," "Knoxville," or "Got a Feelin'," the songs are still lifeless and bland. All there is is a few bouncing fingers on the piano, a twee strum of the guitar, or some other simple structure to serve as the song. In other words, when given a wider palate, Schickele still isn't able to (or doesn't want to) craft anything more than the simplest, barest form of music.
I was worried, although I really like Beekeeper, that the fact that I don't love Ida would taint my opinion of K.'s music. This is not the case. K. is just bad. She sings some words in a very straightforward way and can't/won't write anything of any substance to back her voice. A cat's purr or the wind against the trees has more depth and beauty. K.'s music simply gets in the way of me enjoying some righteous wind sounds.
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