Guitar Heroine Kaki King Returns To UK -

Guitar Heroine Kaki King Returns To UK

12:46 PM GMT 22/01/2008

KAKI KING, a 26 year old from Atlanta, Georgia, was playing drums until 9/11 happened. “I went down into the subway in New York to clear my brain,” she recently told MOJO’s Martin Aston, “and started playing guitar there, which is easier to amplify than the voice. People then started asking if I had a CD, so I made one.”

Duly re-focused, King’s prowess as a fingerpicker earned her a place in Rolling Stone’s “20 New Guitar Gods” list. A fan of limey music like Lush and The Cure, she sings breathily like the former’s Miki Berenyi while taking her electro-acoustic guitar from extremes of exquisite languor to stunning percussive frenzies, somehow reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen but, you know, acoustic.

You can catch the Keira Knightly of avant-shoegaze in the UK next month, where she plays the following dates, including a just-announced second date at the Roundhouse on Saturday, February 16.

Feb 13 King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow
Feb 14 Glee Club, Birmingham
Feb 15 The Roundhouse, London
Feb 16 The Roundhouse, London

Meanwhile, her latest album Dreaming Of Revenge isn’t out until March 4, so here’s two voice-and-guitar tracks from 2006’s John McEntire-produced …Until We Felt Red, “a midnight-blue blend of jazz-fusion, cinematic post-rock and pedal-tastic nu-gaze” say we.

Jessica

Neo-shoegaze drifting that’d make Lush proud. Is she sure she’s not from the Thames Valley?

Yellowcake

Layered voice, acoustic guitar and effects pedals combine in a melancholic reverie.

And here she is in the flesh, performing Playing Pink With Noise last year on Later... With Jools Holland.