Chloe Kimes
He Still Listens to the Radio is just one more brilliant song in the bank for Chloe Kimes.
The first time I ever heard the name Chloe Kimes was here in a reel, and believe me, it took a long time to find such an old post. One of the reasons I love country, and maybe you do, is the sense of enjoyment and fun in so many of the tracks.
Every Chloe Kimes song is like that, except perhaps Atticus. She works hard, lives for the music, and takes it as serious as anyone does any career. Yet she can still laugh at herself and make us laugh with every verse. Buckle up.
Uh Huh from back in May is much deeper than you might expect. And there are a lot of words for me to dig into. They come thick and fast in this up-tempo masterpiece. Almost every song has her wonderful fiddler on board, Cat McDonald, and there’s a racing fast solo that defies belief in this one. Taylor Shuck is another regular. This feels like a tight squad.
June’s Afraid to Die is funny and serious at the same time. She’s got a gas tank out of town, and needs time. She’s going to hang out in a motel for a while and maybe send a postcard back. It sounds like she’s on tour again. The main theme is about trying to feel alive in a mundane world. She’s looking for sensations: heat, cold, fear. Will climate change race out of our control? Is she self-medicating on Coors Light again, I wonder? She refuses to conform and curl up and hide. My feeling after listening to this all summer is that Chloe isn’t much afraid of death. She knows her best friends will come with her into the afterlife, the bullies will be left behind, presumably in Hell, so let’s go!
And finally onto the latest song, one song with two titles. A recent poll selected He Still Listens to the Radio but the subtitle survives, Hammer and Nail Me. My gut feeling was that the triple or quadruple entendres in Hammer and Nail Me might be too much for an American audience, but for me that title captures Chloe’s sense of playfulness much better. Surely a man who is good with his hands in practical ways might know his way around a bedroom too?
There’s a sadness here though, in the sense that radio suggests an old-fashioned behaviour, or a much-older man. I know that radio lives on in podcast world but it’s not our main way to discover music any more, and not something I have on in the background as all my favourite DJs retire or die.
Johnnie Walker, Steve Wright, Terry Wogan, all gone. Chris Evans, even, is not the force he was on national UK radio. Although thank the lord for Whispering Bob Harris, still working away.
Yes, we have other ways to find new artists now, but I do miss their witty bants between tracks. Radio 1 was a core part of adolescence for us but my teenage daughter never listens to it. It’s Spotify and TikTok all the way now, and I feel poorer for it, and probably unjustifiably so.
This deep dive is part of my preparations to see Lola Kirke live in London a month before Christmas. Her support artist? Chloe Kimes. LFG! Chloe has a wonderful way with words and knows how to put a catchy tune together. Her website has all the information and she is a regular on both Instagram and TikTok. And she is completely independent so head on over to Bandcamp!