Published on Dec 29, 2004
There are certain bands whom you have no clue of, but have seen
or heard one of their songs at random somewhere, and thought they
were good, and forget about them completely, only to realize that
you know this song, and it is nice, when you confront it again the
next time. Still you don’t know the band behind the song, and don’t
care much to find out about them either: K’s Choice is such an
outfit.
An example: the song”Virgin State Of Mind” by K’s Choice,
featured on one of the episodes of
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: I bet you didn’t know about this,
did you?
This Belgian act, led by the brother-sister duo of Gret and
Sarah Bettens have been in the music scene for quite sometime, and
ten years and just four records later, they are here with a “best
of” compilation, titled
10 1993-2003 Ten Years Of . It is only surprising that the
band could come up with an anthology of eighteen songs — three of
them being unreleased singles — with just four studio LPs backing
them up.
This album is for the aforementioned many, who have hummed a
“K’s Choice” song or two, without having had the proclivity to buy
the record, for the fear of investing in a band they have never
heard of.
10 is the typical guitar-based alternative rock record,
which one can sing along with — whilst it plays in the background
— without giving much serious thought to the music. It is a bunch
of songs that aren’t too much of anything.
Sarah, the ‘sister’ Bettens, plays the role of the lead singer
for K’s Choice. She is not one of ‘those’ angst-ridden women in
rock. However, she does have a uniquely gruff voice that goes into
brief lachrymal fissures every now and then, when all you can hear
is arid air being blown out through her throat. This adds an
element of lament to her vocals, especially since her songs,
oftentimes seem benign and unexcited.
The band writes goody-goody numbers like “I Smoke A Lot” (a song
about smoking that has words, “I smoke a lot; sometimes it’s fun,
sometimes it’s not”), “Little Man” (a song about Gret’s new-born
baby that starts off with the words, “I have a brother I love more
than me; he and his wife had a little baby”), and “Dad” (it goes
without saying what the song is about, on which Sarah confesses “I
was a kid, you were my dad; I didn’t always understand”).
To be honest, there is some amount of intelligence with which
the band writes its songs, and which slips into absolute obscurity,
for reasons attributed to the group’s immoderately tame nature. For
instance, “The Ballad Of Leah And Paul,” a funny song about an
inane imagined love between two fictional characters, reveals its
witty humor only if one pays more attention to the lyrics than the
singing and the music.
The song “Not An Addict” is a potent anti-drug song that has the
simple and extremely stinging words, “It’s not a habit, it’s
cool…I’m not an addict…The deeper you stick it in
your vein, the deeper the thoughts, there’s no more pain,” still
not being as effective, due to the rather meek music that adorns
it. Even “Everything For Free,” one of the relatively edgier K’s
Choice songs, seems like a just another ‘broken-hearted’ number at
first. But, in fact, it is a very cheeky song about the parody of
being a mental patient, and having the liberty — that a supposedly
sane person is deprived of — of being totally irresponsible and
foolish, and not having to worry about it at all.
K’s Choice is a fairly intelligent band, but whose smartness
goes unnoticed, unless an attempt is made to explore the depths of
their music. But, on the other hand, it is very difficult to do so,
because of their annoyingly docile exterior, be it while being
humorous, or while being serious. A “Best Of” LP is the right album
to get acquainted with a band like this one, when it is at its most
enjoyable. So, after ten years of music and existence, introducing
K’s Choice!