Sophia Kennedy - Squeeze Me
Squeeze Me – a slogan from the colorful world of toy departments: It comes in the warm department store light as a sweet temptation, but behind the charming invitation of lifeless plush and plastic faces, something else might be hiding. On Squeeze Me, the third album by Sophia Kennedy, who was born in Baltimore and lives in Hamburg and Berlin, the seemingly harmless is turned on its head: Do you embrace me or crush me? That is the central question that Kennedy explores with elevated determination over ten songs. After her self-titled debut (2017, Pampa Records), which fluctuated between the glamour of the Great American Songbook, electronics, and club influences, garnering international attention, her second album Monsters (City Slang) followed in 2021, diving into surrealism and transcendence. Now, Kennedy and her long-time musical collaborator and co-writer Mense Reents (Egoexpress, die Vögel, Die Goldenen Zitronen) offer a more disillusioned commentary on the status quo with Squeeze Me. The complexity of interpersonal relationships, questions of power dynamics and self-determination, already central themes for Kennedy, run as a compact narrative throughout the album. More minimal than her previous works, Kennedy indulges on Squeeze Me in her talent for catchy melodies with pop appeal and psychedelic digressions: repetitive piano chords, shimmering synthesizer basses, strangely glimmering choirs, and a scream, for instance, create the sound backdrop for Rodeo. Alongside Imaginary Friend, one of the pop highlights of the album, the urgent question arises: "Where are we heading to?". But instead of providing answers, Kennedy moves forward joyfully and multilayered. The songwriting on Squeeze Me is characterized by its simplicity and a new tendency toward reduction. Accompanied by organ and drum machine beats, Kennedy breaks away from a stale, supposed dream state on Imaginary Friend with irresistible catchiness and casualness – while on Runner, which lures us onto a dark dancefloor, she briefly transforms into a fly. A cinematic quality runs through the entire album – no wonder, as Kennedy once studied film. Towards the conclusion, on the prickly Hot Match, she picks up speed again and barrels through rising clouds of smoke with motorik beat and hot tires. Hardness and beauty, wit and melancholy, fatalism and strength: Squeeze Me turns upside down what we thought we knew about Sophia Kennedy, perfectly in line with the motto of the cover, where she or the rest of the world are upside down, depending on the perspective. More focused and "poppier" than ever, Squeeze Me is Sophia Kennedy's most coherent album, perhaps even somewhat of an artistic manifesto. It is a multifaceted, self-assured statement, despite or perhaps because of all the crises inside and out. Squeeze Me does not ignore the world outside, but instead sets its own against it. A world we somehow know, but perhaps have never seen quite like this. Join Sophia Kennedy in this world as she takes us on a journey at Knust on October 25th.
Doors open: 19:00 Uhr
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
