It’s always exciting to find out about musicians from my hometown,
K. Campbell is the Houston, TX-based solo project of Kirke Campbell. Started in 2012 as a way to explore songwriting and home recording, K. Campbell aimed to take the spirit and aesthetics of the Punk and Hardcore he grew up on and filter it through the melody and song-craft of late 70’s Power Pop and 90’s Indie Rock and Alternative. The result was 2013’s first full-length “Pure PopFor Jaded Punks”, a lo-fi synthesis of equal parts The Clash, Nick Lowe, and Elliott Smith.
Since 2018, K. Campbell released a series of five 7” singles, culminating in 2023’s “Smoke,” which included dreamy layers of 12-string guitar, keyboards, and a free jazz-inspired sax solo. Indeed, while the ultimate goal of this project – catchy, precise, and intentional songwriting – remains the same, the sonic scope of the music has expanded through more confident, higher fidelity recordings and more frequent collaborators.
This trajectory will continue on a trio of upcoming split 7”s, firstly together with Belfast’s Heart Shaped, via K. Campbell’s very own co-founded local label, Poison Moon Records.
K. Campbell’s contribution “Neil & Joni” was inspired by the music of the 1970s he heard around the house (and in the station wagon) growing up. Featuring a catchy mercurial vocal interplay with fellow Houstonian singer Mandy Kim Clinton (formerly known as Pearl Crush, soon under the kiimiira moniker), the song is sure to break gloomy grey moods with an addition of some playful harmonized guitar-solo histrionics, while nodding lyrically to a couple of classic folk songwriters, as the title suggests, to paint an intimate portrait of two teenage friends whose love for music, sunsets, and libations keeps life going in the right direction.
Vibrant, stirring, high-energy vibes awaken the senses with a relentless infectious string of crunching guitar riffs, buzzy acoustic strums, and searing twisted flourishes, fueled by bouncy bass lines, and driving drum beats, around a powerfully emotive male/female vocal interplay, mixing urgent, euphoric dreaminess with tense angsty cries, into bursting horizons of harmony and hope.
Imaginative, heartwarming visuals, created by Bobby Markos of Documavision, blend colorful animations with vintage family snapshots, and sing-along lyrics to sync hypnotically with the timeless sentiments of the soundtrack. The mind’s eye of recorded memories projects nostalgia and comfort through rapid flows of motion to push the viewer forward into new and adventurous thought forms of bright, eclectic dreams.
Keep up with K. CAMPBELL:
