Kinzli

Polkadot Rec. Kinzli : Going Just To Be Going (KO/US/UK,2007)***°

-When I was 12 my parentsq adopted a South Korean girl of 8 who had lived on a garbage belt for some years and later had spent another period in orphan houses, she now had to become my sister. When I look back on her life until she went her separate ways, I have to conclude that she never was able to adapt herself into the kind of over-organized life she was given, where there was nothing to give her a real identity she could fit in with.-..

Also Kinzli Coffman was adopted at 8 by an American family and also had no choice but to adjust to a different lifestyle. Very quickly she wrote her own songs, and was exposed to different mainstream music styles (gospel, folk, bluegrass,..). When she went to London she loved it so much, she stayed there and recorded her debut, with BBC producer Peter Michaels, and engineers Ray Staff (Led Zepplin, Supertramp, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, Beautiful South,..) and Martin Giles (Depeche Mode, Cardigans), and released it on her own label.

She spans many genres, from folk, to jazz, to Latin, and so on. It sounds as if she interprets “traditionals” in the genres, and sings them so well they became her own songs ; but never the less they ARE also her own songs, except for one (traditional).

When I look back to South-Korea, I remember various albums of folk and song styles, that were interpreted in the early seventies when musicians were exposed for the first time to American, but also some French and other music, and the beautiful and sensitive interpretations of some musicians (especially by Chang-Shik and Yoon Hyong-Jo). They had a typical Korean innocence, sweetness and honesty I can hardly compare to anything else. Kinzli most probably never heard such examples. But also she has her own kind of perfect sensitivity with a beautiful vibrato in the right moments, or surprising and spontaneous in the middle of singing a song (“music and mystery”). This is especially convincing in jazzy genres ("Dangerous Love",...), while she often also creates a kind of jazzy flavour to other genres, in an emotional and spontaneous and convincing way of her own.

The songs, because of certain styles that take sometimes just a bit of distance from the feelings, while the inspiration to them remains real, and the singing uplifts the content into the beauty of the singing itself. But also the more country-like titletrack, “going just to be going” comes over well, confronting with its lyrics. Also the more acoustic singer-songwriter-like songs, like “Italy” for instance come over strongly with lyrics and voice.