It’s a bit of a mess, this Kid Bookie album. You don’t even have to dig in too deeply to see that, either. Opener AI (Save Yourself) is dissected in such a way that its intro and outro are their own separate tracks; it’s similar for Scars and Love Me When You’re Angry, except it’s one or the other for both. That all falls among additional interludes and sub-two-minuters that gives the impression of a tracklist that simultaneously bloated and fractured beyond belief. Then, when you get to the music itself, little is resolved, between off-kilter sequencing and a bevy of styles explored that are almost totally alien in the Kid Bookie canon. Finally, on top of that, there’s significantly less rapping than you might’ve come to expect.
Though, maybe that’s all a good thing, or at least a conscious choice. If you’re looking to dispel notions of being ‘limited’…well, it doesn’t get much more obvious than this, does it? And to be fair, Kid Bookie did need something like that. A background in grime left the technical side of his rapping invariably better than average, only to be ultimately reined in the standard cocktail of flat, grinding guitars and remarkable inflexibility that are part and parcel for ‘genre-benders’ who’ll pay lip service to the idea, but with little worthwhile proof. Kid Bookie, meanwhile, seems to understand that a radical, diverse artist needs to, y’know, be that. Regardless of how stiff its gears can sometimes be to lock into place, Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead makes that difficult to deny.
And to be clear, for the shortcomings that can easily be plucked out, this is still good, probably Kid Bookie’s best full work to date. Intent does factor in heavily there, in how game he seems to completely upend pre-existing notions of his artistic identity, distance and incongruity be damned. Perhaps that points to where his kinship with Corey Taylor over the years has come from, especially when Songs For The Living…‘s platter of ideas wouldn’t feel out of place for him either. There’s plunging, radio-ready alt-metal in AI (Save Yourself) and Scars; acoustic sincerity screaming out with its full voice on Purgatory; an open-ended alt-rock air-clutcher in Nothing To Believe In; the range, especially on an entire run-through, can be pretty impressive by itself.
Granted, if you peel some of that back by even a tiny bit, the shakiness starts to bleed through. As rock-solid a ballad as Purgatory is, there’s a bit of a stall felt when its only the second song in, especially after AI (Save Yourself) so proudly wears its towering radio-rocker visage as an opener. Still, it could definitely be worse, like Self Control and DOWN MY FRIEND. Not only are they brittle wisps of acoustic ephemera—both under two minutes to really drive that home—but putting them one after another is a bewildering choice. It’s indicative of how deeply the no-holds-barred, splatterpaint creative style of the album runs, to the extent where its own peaks and troughs are not only easy to spot, but even easier to think of a fix for. All it’d take is a bit of reshuffle to potentially sit a lot easier.
Still, the inkling with Songs For The Living… is that Kid Bookie is much more concerned with getting his ideas on the board than anything else. There’s a tenacity at its core that points to that with how forceful its overcoming of adversity on various fronts is. The album’s lynchpin moments, therefore, are when that’s properly laid bare and allowed to cry out. Purgatory, with a chorus that’s torn and beaten under the sincerity of its scream, is the perfect instance of that, seconded by the forceful, spat-out rapping on Nothing To Believe In and the emo simmer of Love Me When You’re Angry. Even slightly outside of that range, Love Drunk—while not as earworm-y as its Boys Like Girls-penned namesake—is a respectable dalliance into pop-rock that Kid Bookie can take in the easiest of strides.
It’s instances like these, where you can look past the messiness and shagginess of construction and focus on the nailed-on growth, that Songs For The Living… feels truly worth it. On prospect alone, it’s one of the more impressive works from an artist like this, on the basis of a coherent attempt at something adventurous as stated. But when you take into account how good portions of it do actually work, maybe Kid Bookie is onto something even more solid than first thought. If anything, the flaws sort of add the experience, as the product of human experimentation as opposed to some out-the-box mandate guaranteed to work commercially and little else. If Kid Bookie wants to be the one flying the flag for nu-gen to look outside its box and actually do something, an audition reel like this is the way to go.
For fans of: Linkin Park, Bob Vylan, Scarlxrd
‘Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead’ by Kid Bookie is released on 13th September on Marshall Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
