Kimmo is a new band coming from Paris, France. Their debut 6 track mini-lp gives the image of a two-faced group, depending on which voice calls the tune. The music is clearly emo but it is much closer to bands such as June of 44 than Fugazi because of the occasional jazz/post-rock aspect (‘Beluga’) and the pervasive noisy dimension. In fact, Kimmo’s music seems to lie within the framework of French emo: Prohibition, Heliogabale, Purr, Playdoh are as many bands definitely worth listening to that our non-french readers should discover.

When the girl (Natasha) sings, it adds a noise-pop aspect to these emo songs, her voice being often close to Sleater Kinney. It regularly oscillates between uneasiness and anger, often being on the verge of collapsing, which echoes the music’s underlying tension. The beginning of Conversation for Conversation is strangely unrepresentative of its atmosphere but it may surely please many listeners. Natasha’s voice is incredibly close to Bjork’s in ‘Impilho’. Let’s specify that it is not a shortcut comparison, it appears to me as a blatant fact and this is not a flattering device since I don’t like Bjork. Fortunately, as soon as the guitars and bass appear and back up martial drums, you know the song is not a pale epigone’s work: her voice then becomes harsh and closer to Sleater Kinney than Bjork. When she shouts in a raucous and fierce voice (‘Manta’, ‘Land of nod’), it reminds one of Babes in Toyland and especially Heliogabale. It can let us hope that she might sing à la Daisy Chainsaw in the future.

Songs in which Matthieu’s voice is to the fore are much more oriented towards the french emocore scene, which after all seems normal insofar as the guy used to play in the emo band Pregnant. His voice oscillates between Thomas Mery’s fragility (Purr) when he delicately utters his lyrics and Prohibition’s singer when he seems to have stepped back from the microphone in order to sharply yell his depressing rage. ‘The day they kill richy’ starts in a Fugazi fashion that brilliantly gives way to this French emo touch. In ‘tibet’, Natasha joins in to temporarily take over for a heady song which sticks to your head, definitely the best one on the album, the one you play once again when the cd stops spinning.

Kimmo is one of these new French bands which proves that France has something else to offer than standardized nu-metal, second rate dance floor electro-pop and awful so-called reggae.

-SEB WOOd

/june 1st 2003/