AN AMERICAN artist who can’t be compared to anyone else is coming to Reading next month, ready to wow music fans.
The Face Bar is the venue for a concert by hard-to-describe, multi-genre artist, Kristeen Young.
Organisers say some people have tried to compare her to artists like Yves Tumor, Kate Bush, Diamanda Galas, but they are wrong.
Young is said to play piano/keyboard in a dissonant bashing style, sing using a wide range of operatic vocals, and have lyrics that eviscerate in a playful way, like an afternoon with a Victorian child ghost.
The show will feature songs from her new self-produced album, The Beauty Shop. It is a song cycle based on the life of a serial killer, with each song representing a different major emotion.
“But, it’s really about how life kills our emotions,” she says.
The album’s lived-in imagery originates from the beauty shop her foster/adopted mom had in a room in the little St Louis house where she grew up.
Besides the audio of the album, Kristeen has also shot and edited six song videos for The Beauty Shop and plans to release a visual version of the album in 2023.
Never on a record label, or with management, continuously navigating on her own, she has always been the epitome of DIY.
Shortly after arriving in New York, where she now resides, she met producer Tony Visconti, who brought David Bowie to one of her shows and ended up recording a duet with Kristeen, a song she wrote called Saviour.
She also toured several times as Morrissey’s opening act.
Dave Grohl discovered one of her songs on a mix tape and then contacted her… which lead to him to playing drums on her entire 2014 album, The Knife Shift.
Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) was guitarist for her 2017 album, Live at The Witch’s Tit.
Her first live show post-pandemic was Riot Fest, September 2021, following by her own curated night at SxSW 2022.
Since the June 2022 release of The Beauty Shop she’s been filling rooms in New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, London and Manchester…. touring on her own. She has a West Coast tour booked for early December 2022.
For the Reading gig, she will be joined by San Francisco post-punk band Strange Cities, which was formed from the ashes of several Bay Area bands.
Drawing on influences such as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Chameleons, and JAMC, Strange Cities’ sound also reflects the foggy, jagged, industrial landscape that inspired their name.
The band recently toured the western half of the US with Gene Loves Jezebel.
Kristeen Young’s visit to The Face Bar will be on Wednesday, February 22, from 8pm. Tickets cost £6.50, and available from www.wegottickets.com
