Spine

• Track Listing

The follow-up to Kee Avil's acclaimed 2022 debut Crease: "A stunning debut" (The

Quietus); "A whiplash style of uninhibited exploration" (The Wire); "Kee Avil's debut is a

force" (Foxy Digitalis); "A work of Frankensteinian wonder" (Electronic Sound); "A tightly

coiled, finely wrought vision of avant-pop" (Exclaim); "A debut of fiendish creativity"

(Bandcamp Album Of The Day / Albums Of The Year)

Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and

emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease

garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking

up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of

The Year along the way. It's intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge

take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin.

A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought

collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs.

With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much

rawer sound. She calls it folk-and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music

that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and

real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences.

There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing

of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent

hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay

crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements-guitar,

electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front.

Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key

to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions

of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could

have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that

through time. Seeing the future, the past."

Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease

and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal

experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who

continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went

into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months-a process that may also be a

factor in it's intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really

discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the

sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare

back songs against her usual instincts.

Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really

are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic,

it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much

time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar

bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There

is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's

own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most

important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next

step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on it's own, a

bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in

being human. - jj skolnik