REVIEW: K. Flay's "MONO" via Giant Music

 

In October of last year Kristine Flaherty, also known as singer, rapper and songwriter, K. Flay announced that she had gone completely deaf in one ear. Never one to back down for obstacles she got to work on her fifth record. Now that record is here and regardless of the quality of these songs I want to say, up top, that I really admire this story. While I haven’t ever gotten to document it on this blog, I have been a pretty big K. Flay fan ever since 2017’s Everywhere is Somewhere and though I have found her discography inconsistent in the years since there’s always something to enjoy on each entry.


“Are You Serious” opens the record with a recounting of the day her world went half silent and paints a really jarring and vivid image of what that must be like. The track ends with a ringing in just the left channel and between that and the brutal honesty of the whole thing it goes off really well. From there we get “Raw Raw” a song that represents everything I enjoy about K. Flay as an artist, heavy bass, solid rhymes and heartfelt breaks for the softer moments. This continues on for a few tracks and she shows off some Rage Against the Machine influence and offers a feature from Pierce the Veil’s Vic Fuentes. Vic shows up for a verse on “Irish Goodbye” but I wish I could say he does something unique here, still he delivers a solid performance. The song “Bar Soap” is a throwback to her Solutions record, which I appreciate as it’s maybe my favorite of the five.


Where the record starts to lose it for me is “Spaghetti” which to me represents a side of K. Flay I never really enjoy. Here she delivers out of context, quirky lines about Metallica and being high alongside a feature from Kid Sistr and no one involved comes off praiseworthy. Also, the beat is just the riff from The Killers’ classic “Mr. Brightside” and only digs us further in the hole of this weird sort of cool aunt rap. She also uses the ringing in the ear effect again and it feels really weak without any context. I also cannot emphasize enough how tired I am of songs like “Watch Me” and “In America,” not just in this discography but in general. Messages about the toxic and attention seeking culture of social media and how hard it is to be American are sentiments I certainly agree with, but I do not need another copy and paste message about either. Katherine, you said it yourself in the opening track; $13,000 to tell you you’ve lost your hearing? There’s a song somewhere in that. That’s sort of my issue with the latter half of the record. There’s nothing of substance here and I stop having anything to say.

“Perfectly Alone” is a great closer, however. Here she comes to peace with what is, accepts what will come, a theme I feel K. Flay always sort of does but always goes off well with the changing of times around her. MONO is not the greatest K. Flay record, but it's a decent one that maybe is a bit top loaded.

I liked this record

Favorite tracks:

  1. Are You Serious?
  2. Raw Raw
  3. Punisher
  4. Irish Goodbye [feat. Vic Fuentes of Pierce the Veil]
  5. Hustler
  6. Spaghetti [feat. Kid Sistr]
  7. Bar Soap
  8. Watch Me Pt. 1
  9. In America
  10. Shy
  11. Watch Me Pt. 2
  12. Chaos is Love
  13. Yes I'm Serious
  14. Perfectly Alone

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