Search - Kimya Dawson :: I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean

A ROLLING PEACH GATHERS NO MOLD

Brier Random | Santa Barbara, CA | 01/03/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Kimya's contributions, as half of NYC's anti-folk Moldy Peaches, were always their best moments. And on her first solo release, she reminds me of a Bob Dylan waiting to happen. The album she's recorded on her bedroom 4-track is stunning for its smart-kid confidence. And her voice, it doesn't crack so much as it disintigrates, at every vocal turn, and it's gorgeous. There's no lie in her fire. She's like the cool chick who rides her bmx bike down State Street, raw yet vulnerable. She's the cool chick who thinks we're cool, too."

Primitive and Powerful

WrtnWrd | Northridge, CA USA | 04/14/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"With her third solo release I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean, Kimya Dawson (half of The Moldy Peaches) continues to explore contemporary anomie within the constraints of a folksy primitivism. The music's simplicity may be a matter of range, but evidence suggests it's conscious. These 11 tracks are sparer than anything on the Peaches' debut. Where the Peaches are desperately playful, Dawson is playfully desperate. Except for "Stinky Stuff", a throwaway improv recorded with her day-care charges, most of these songs grapple deeply with various states of depression. All the cuts sound goofy at first, but they're heartbreaking, none moreso than the child-abuse epic "Hold My Hand", which goes like this: Dawson's discovers a battered child, talks to an indifferent social worker, gets beaten up by outraged parents, calls Oprah for advice, confronts the social worker who taunts her and, wanting to bash her head in with a crowbar, instead drowns both herself and the abused child, holding hands underwater, to stop perpetuating the cycle of violence."

Virgin Listener

Deloy C. Oberlin | 10/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Believe it or not I am a 55-year-old, happily-married mother of two who has never even heard of the Moldy Peaches. But I love this album!! My son played the album for me. At first, the music was almost painful to listen to. Kimya's fragil voice was so exposed and vulnerable, and the mix of sounds seemed wincingly "unprofessional". Then it seemed quirky and funny, as I focused on the Talking Ernest and PeeWee song. I began to be intrigued by her juxtaposition of nursery rhymes with pain and truth; of TVland with tenderness and death. I played the CD several times while on a long drive home. I was hooked. The album has all the poignancy of a mother singing lullabies to her baby and all the edge of a well-honed knife. If you don't buy the album, at least get ahold of it and listen to it, alone and in the quiet of night. WOW."