The transition from KAINA's Next to The Sun to It Was A Home is more drastic than anticipated. Especially since they are both produced by Sooper Records label chief (or at least one of them) Sen Morimoto. Next to The Sun was focused, as the title implies, on allowing the soul singer to find a favorable place to align herself amongst the stars. It tangled with the interwoven nest of roots that form her identity as a first-generation immigrant born in Chicago through reflections set to Latin jazz and songs that reminisced on the golden era of Motown. If her previous album found the singer homesteading in her past, It Was A Home sees her fledging spectacularly from this enclave of security.
The compositions, while still hinting at a certain relish for Latin music, often curl themselves around various forms of light psychedelia, scintillating pop-soul, and warm, reassuring R'nB. The title track itself feels like a walking tour with wine and Whitney Houston down a detour within memory lane, up to and including the grand sway of KAINA's melodious musings, and the accompaniment of some plunky synth notes that guide the grove and which land on the ears like dewdrops on flower pedals.
Many of these compositions feel pared back compared to KAINA's debut, which points to the growing sense of assurance that the singer has in her vocal abilities, as well as the maturing instincts of Sen as a producer. A song like "Good Feeling" (a track which I presume Sen plays guitar on) is perfectly balanced in a way that only a producer who has allowed their ego to be dispersed into the layers of a song can accomplish. Its equilibrium subsists in a nurtured interplay between flirty synths that dart around like hummingbirds and rippling, lubricated guitar work that sounds like it is cresting out of the overflow cistern of Nick Hakim's Green Twins- an invigorating plash of summer sun-kisses and humidity cutting sprits of sustenance that help KAINA's coo sound as refreshing as a strawberry slushy sipped on a rooftop patio in July.
KAINA's collaborations on It Was A Home further expand the dimensions and potentialities of her performance on the brooding and progressive neon burn of "Ultraviolet," which bears the singing gleam of Sleater-Kinney's Corin and Carrie's contemplative angst, and the funky, bubble-bass bop and wiggle-wave synth-psyche of "Blue" featuring Helado Negro.
While Helado certainly brings some bumping grooves to the album, the real funk doesn't drop until after it's been polished to a delicious rosy hue and set for display on the swooning riggle and jive of "Apple," a number that calls back to a pre-Y2K era of R'nB with its nimble, darting flow and skronky guitar leads. Later, the album's wayward psyche-soul tendencies find their full embrace in the lapping Caribbean-scented calm of "Golden Mirror" which leads and then leaves with a wave and a promise of future romance and adventures.
KAINA is certainly pressing against her boundaries on this It Was A Home, but with every graceful shove, she expands the plat on which she can lay her ultimate claim.
