Kingo sounds like it came together pretty easily, with minimal resistance- like it just flowed out of the band. I don't really have evidence I can cite for this conjecture, but it is undoubtedly, an easygoing LP. The debut album from Joel Kirschenbaum's newest project King of Heck resembles the kind of music you might overhear friends playing together on a porch of a campus townhouse on a cloudless, late spring day sometime after exam week. Carefree, loose melodies spill out into an atmosphere of lazy sunshine, plumes of cheap cigarette smoke, and an ambiance of harmonious fellowship. Joel's guitar work is simultaneously sharp, pliant, and percussive, strumming his instrument like he's playing a washboard, with its corrugated plates bending at his touch like a loose bundle of violin strings and producing an uncanny sense of suppleness. Somewhat at a remove, his voice and singing style on the Kingo occupy separate spaces altogether, hanging out in opposite corners of the room, suspended in refrain above the rest of the groovy, stoner garage mix, observing and probing, searching for each other as they sense their way through pillars of dignified rock excellence and grazing flurries of left-field ingenuity. It is a record with many phases and sparks of character. Sometimes it feels like Kingo is dialing into Phish, other times it is kicking up dust with ZZ Top, elsewhere it gushes with juicy joy and lof-fi goodness a la Apples in Stereo, and still, it never feels out of play when Joel cell-shades in cartoon voices as you might expect during one of Dan Deacon's improvisations. On their first outing, King of Heck finds their due place in the freedom of the moment- not constrained by their past, and certainly not overly concerned about a future that will surely forge its own course.
