This is the Kit
Careful of Your Keepers
Rough Trade
9 June 2023
Kate Stables has much to answer for on Careful of Your Keepers, the new album by This is the Kit. Like how do you make music that seems so unhinged while keeping everything tightly in check? How do you write a song with only ten words and pack in more meaning than songs featuring dozens more?
The questions multiply, yet answers are perhaps simpler than one might imagine. Stables is simply one of those artists not content to sit on her laurels. She is constantly reinventing her music, challenging the conventions without ever seeming to overstep. With the help of Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys on production duties, This is the Kit defies the assumptions of what is typically done in the field of contemporary folk music.
Simple guitar phrases coalesce with evocative drums as Stables softly sings Goodbye Bite. “You have been here with me seen not seen/ Gnawing on your big shins/ What it takes to see/ The good in things/ The good in things/This is a ‘how shit is this measuring stick.’” Sometimes you need a huge range of measurements to establish where the good is. Brass adds to the proceedings while she plays with words adding layers of meaning along the way. “Hopeless, home sick, hopelessly stick/ Homesick, hopеless, hold up your stick.”
From the simple strums of an acoustic guitar, things rapidly go in the most unexpected directions on Inside Outside. Accompanying instruments fire off at strange angles. Skittery drums, off-kilter keyboards and just a hint of feedback create an unstable compound held in place by Stables’s gorgeous voice. Inside Outside could be a theoretical concept, yet it doubles as a love song. “All the molecules/ Were focused on your next move…Bite of as much as you can chew/ I chew, chew, choose you.”
Nothing is what it seems on Take You to Sleep, from the simple banjo that opens the track to the guitars that enter quickly. A brilliant horn phrase captures the ear, and just at the point when you think you’ve figured things out, the free jazz enters. Everything you know is wrong, yet it is also absolutely right. The simplest of phrases, combined with the simplest of changes, create something more than you could have imagined. “Give me your hand/ Take back your hand/ Took back your hand/ Give back your hand.” Subtly suggestive, as changeable as the wind or rain.
Kate Stables seems almost to be a force of nature. She bends music to her will, creating and refining contexts almost at will. With Careful of Your Keepers, she has created her own magic lantern, ever changeable, ever intriguing. This is the Kit are not a band of the moment; they own the moment.
Order ‘Careful of Your Keepers’ here
This is the Kit Dates
UK / Euro / Festival dates below
19 May Minack Theatre, Matinee Show, Portcurno, UK
19 May Minack Theatre, Evening Show, Portcurno, UK – SOLD OUT
16 Jun Black Deer Festival, Kent, UK
16 Jul Folk By The Oak, Hertfordshire, UK
27 Jul Warwick Folk Festival, Warwick, UK
29 Jul Deer Shed Festival, North Yorkshire, UK
UK TOUR
08 Nov Assembly Hall, Worthing, UK
09 Nov Junction, Cambridge, UK
10 Nov St. Laurence Church, Reading, UK
11 Nov Tram Shed, Cardiff, UK
12 Nov Glee Club, Birmingham, UK
14 Nov Neuadd Ogwen, Bangor, UK
16 Nov Cyprus Avenue, Cork, IRE
17 Nov Roisin Dubh, Galway, IRE
18 Nov National Concert Hall, Dublin, IRE
19 Nov Mandela Hall, Belfast, UK
21 Nov Summerhall, Edinburgh, UK
22 Nov Sage, Gateshead, UK
23 Nov Irish Centre, Leeds, UK
24 Nov Academy 2, Manchester, UK
25 Nov Barbican, London, UK
2024
03 Feb Bristol Beacon, Bristol UK