Kiki Bohemia

Kiki Bohemia's music is a constant balancing act. It oscillates between power and intimacy, without ever pausing at either of these poles. It is this mixture of casualness and grand gesture that makes her music so special.

Those Are Not Songs, the second solo album by Kiki Bohemia, begins with a lie. Because it's not just songs that Bohemia gathers here. It is great songwriting. When disarmingly simple melodies peel out of grimy primer, when a piece soars to a chorus, it shines in all its glory. But the other side is always perceptible, ambiguity and doubt. Bohemia play with the dialectic of closeness and distance, resilience and vulnerability. They make no secret of their penchant for the morbid. Nor does it hide its desire for expenditure, catharsis, anthem.