Tune Yards- Who Kill

Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs, calls herself “new kind of woman.” She’s not afraid to use alternating caps, sings ambivalently of sex and violence, plays the ukulele and makes a kind of pop that draws from non-Western musical elements. Whether or not it’s “new,” her message certainly is complicated and is delivered with a unique vocal expressivity that demands more attention than her lo-fi rudiments might suggest.

BiRd-BrAinS, her debut, was a fully formed statement that showcased Merrill’s vocal flexibility harnessed to hypnotic (and sometimes annoying) looping elements and chintzy Casio keyboards and drums. But w h o k i l l, her new album, makes its predecesor look like a rough draft. It benefits from the accoutrements offered by a bigger label, including a sound that is expounded upon and brightened (plus a colorfully-produced music video for “Bizness”). But what at first sounds like a trade-off in intimacy is belied by the lyrics—she’s still telling you her secrets, but in an even more arresting caterwaul than before.

Her topical interests range from playful takes on negative body image to the joys of passionate sex, but the main fixation here is violence, evidenced by track titles like “Riotriot,” “Gangsta” and “Killa.”

“There is a freedom in violence that I don’t understand/and like I’ve never felt before,” she wails at the end of “Riotriot.” And the sentiment’s not hard to pick up on, given that the tUnE-yArDs project basically sounds like a one-woman vehicle for catharsis. Garbus lets it all hang out, and her sincerity is almost uncomfortable, at times evoking the ghost of Kurt Cobain. Still, a distinct female experience has a central presence on w h o k i l l and the tUnE-yArDs persona, a feature that aligns Garbus most with the excellent St. Vincent.

Both artists deliver mature statements about the complexities of womanhood, delivered in a musical package that is like a candy apple with razor blades hidden inside. But Garbus is even less refined than her contemporaries; she lets her thong and the runs in her stockings show.