KAYE | Anyone/Closest Stranger (Single)
By Jen Ho, Contributer
You’re the closest stranger
The closest stranger
NYC’s indie rock goddess KAYE, a.k.a. Charlene Kaye, ended 2020 with the release of her debut LP Conscious Control, a brilliant body of work that envelops the reader in a riveting journey of navigating trauma, nostalgia, love, and being human, all the while melting your soul with an electrifying production (by Kaye & Grant Zubritsky) that lingers like the aftertaste of fine whiskey, leaving you buzzed with desire for another round of listening to keep the euphoric feeling as long as possible.
But Kaye had more to say. Her single release, Anyone/Closest Stranger, was the last piece of the puzzle. While the two tracks overall contrast in sound, texture, and theme, they converge at the intersection of tragedy, grief, and reclamation.
Anyone is a vigorous anthem that immediately begins with a spine-chilling opening:
Do you fucking know who I am little boy?
Who you’re dealing with
It doesn’t stop there for the unfortunate sadf*ck on the receiving end. Kaye intentionally leaves the verses bare so it feels as if she’s centimeters away from the listener’s face. The hushed anger in her voice is so raw that you can’t escape the feeling of her spitting rage with each consonant. Then the chorus section breaks through, the synth and bass lines take wing, and Kaye crumples.
And for a moment I wasn’t me, just a body
I could have been anyone
Kaye knows that the past can’t be undone, and the chorus tragically illustrates that agony of being mindlessly cast aside as an object of sex. You were never anything more, and no matter what exterior defense is built, the wound remains, eager to spread from within.
“I think women feel obligated to adopt on ‘It wasn’t that bad’ mentality if it wasn’t full-out rape. But there are a lot of things in between that are just as dehumanizing.”
-- Kaye about ‘Anyone’
And so it is utterly triumphant when Kaye sweeps into the bridge and changes the final line, declaring “You won’t make me feel like I am anyone”. She nurtures the wound, finds closure, and is thus able to finally move forward, soaring higher than she’s ever been.
Then there’s Closest Stranger, a ballad longing for even an ounce of acceptance one day, while also coming to terms with the fact that the day may never arrive.
Kaye’s voice is eerily comforting, like a warm blanket, slipping the listener back into moments in childhood when one cried to parental figures for affection. Her intimate lyrics mourn how these affections were rejected and unreturned, and one can almost hear her voice quiver on each reflection, in dejection.
“I never thought I would release this song. It’s about the endless battle with my Chinese immigrant family for acceptance of my being a songwriter.
I thought this experience might be too niche for an official release, and that it was enough to have written it for myself. But the more I talked about it with others, especially my fellow Asian artist friends, the more I felt it was important to include in my body of work.”
-- Kaye about ‘Closest Stranger’
Intergenerational trauma ravenously feeds off of differing expectations of the American dream between immigrant parental figures and their American-born children, creating a lifetime of trials & tribulations for children who wish to become fully self-carved. I close my eyes, meditating on the repetition of the chorus, until the epic outro swells into full focus. Suddenly, I’m tumbling nauseously through an inescapable vacuum, surrounded patiently by smiling demons ready to consume my flesh and soul.
When I tumble into the other side, it’s quiet and still. The demons have faded away. All that’s left is the ghost-like piano against a vintage voice recording of Kaye’s mother, affirming that Kaye’s father “never, ever, would have approved of [Kaye] being a singer-songwriter” (and producer, might I add??). The brilliant instrumentation, meticulously arranged by Kaye herself and co-producer Dave Scalia, perfectly encapsulates the swirling inescapable burden that many Asian Pacific American children are destined to carry every minute of their lives, for perhaps the rest of their lives: being a disappointment.
As Kaye puts it, “By sampling it, these arrows are now flowers.”
The Conscious Control Deluxe album, featuring Anyone/Closest Stranger and demos & remixes of works from Conscious Control, drops on Friday, September 10th.
KAYE then returns to The Sultan Room on Thursday, September 16th, for the Conscious Control Deluxe album release show. Get vaxxed, get neg-tested, get masked, get going.