Kam Franklin - Land of the Neon Sun
Kam Franklin electrifies the eardrum and slithers into your soul on her genre-blending country funk album Land of the Neon Sun, writes Bee Delores
Kam Franklin's "We Ain't Going" operates as both a throaty, vein-popping protest song and a late-night, grinding rendezvous on the dance floor with your sweaty gay lover. It's a sentiment of resisting tyrannical powers but not forgetting to find the joy of being alive. The shiny, neon-soaked track anchors her new album, Land of the Neon Sun. Its unconventional dynamism electrifies the eardrums and slithers its way down to the soul— empowering, gleeful, vulnerable, and bombastic in equal measure.
The title track, written by album co-producer Margo Price and Jeremy Ivey, cracks open the project with a harrowing story about one woman's chase for fame and feeling trapped into paying a heavy price to be a marquee act when a thick-tied executive takes interest in her. "Though it cost her more than she bargained for, she didn’t think she had a choice," Franklin recounts with a sorrowful, half-hearted sputter. A surrendered sigh escapes her lips before she flips the story and reveals that it was "me a long time ago before I had my back up to the wall," she sings. "If I had to do it all over again, I’m not sure I’d do it all."
With "Didn't I," a tender, prickly ballad written with duet partner Kevin Morby and Sara Van Buskirk, Franklin digs into her folk roots for a visceral meditation about deep, indescribable human connection. "I get lost all day in your radio waves / We’re two thoughts with one brain," Franklin sings tenderly over flecks of acoustic guitar. There are few things as powerful as when you strip away theatrics for an intimate whisper, transcending the here and now.
The frontwoman of Houston band The Suffers keeps that energy fueled and scorching hot on other raw moments such as "Toxic," in which she breaks the unhealthy tug-of-war with only a guitar and layered vocals accompanying her. "You know I’m mostly empathy," she admits, sliding over the greasy melody.
"If trauma were a person I would beat they ass," she later warns in "A Heathen's Hymn," a rhythmic slice of bluesy Americana. She peels back what that means with the line, aimed directly at white supremacists, "Tried to make me feel like shit for simply taking up some space." As the song expands, voices in her head spill out onto the record before applause erupts into the speakers. It's as much a thorny personal revelation as it is a defiant, lung-bursting cry for something in the world to actually change.
"Sunnyside, TX" closes out the genre-blending, 12-track album with a deadly rattle, a plea to "believe us" when it comes to economic, social, and political issues. "My uncle’s in jail, and he can’t afford bail," she shares. "We put the house up for sale, and still that shit didn’t help." The heaviness of heart throbs out in the open, exposing every single micro-aggression and the insidious evil that thrives on complacency and resignation.
Kam Franklin's Land of the Neon Sun is not only a thrilling musical experiment but a lyrical masterclass of profound insight coming from a Black queer woman living in the United States.