(Jagjaguwar) Kaya Wilkins’ second album ranges from confessional blood-letting to 50s ballads and disco-pop – in her own inimitable style
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On this beguiling second album by
New York singer Kaya Wilkins, it’s as if heartbreak has been translated into her native Norwegian and back again via some dodgy machine learning: there’s something wonderfully off about her tales of thwarted lust. An excruciating date is sketched out on Zero Interaction Ramen Bar as “my parasite and I are blushing: a cold one and a sentient dumpling”. At another point she disarmingly admits: “I know sex with me is mediocre / but I can give you asexual wellbeing.” Perhaps the sense of wonkiness is pharmacological in nature. “What if the pills I take will stop me getting wet?” she frets on one of the best tracks, opener Baby Little Tween, and Psych Ward has her dutifully necking more pills as chaos reigns: “Crisis management on the intercom in the psych ward,” she notes with dry detachment, a really funny moment.