I recently did a tarot reading on myself while barely drunk at a pre-drinkss, wondering whether it was truly over with a particular someone. One of the cards I drew was the four of wands, a cheerful looking card, something you’d associate with the major key, singing loudly. Pamela Coleman Smith’s illustration depicts the four of wands forming the base to a pavilion under which a newly wed couple stands. Ironically, it was telling me that whatever short-lived romance was there, was self-contained, to be happy that it’d happened in the first place rather than mourn its end.
The four of wands could easily be transposed for the album cover of “Kiss Big” by Ailbhe Reddy plastered outside Tower Records on Dawson Street. The filter of haze overtop the album cover captures the listening experience of the album. Despite being unfamiliar with the album or Reddy’s other work prior to walking down Dawson everyday, it was obvious from the get-go that the album was a breakup album, not because of any of its precise lyrics, but because of the unquantifiable ambiance generated by the entire arrangement.
Still, despite being a break-up album, almost all of the songs are in the major key–similar to the four of wands. Although Reddy doesn’t attempt to do anything groundbreaking with the theme or in the genre, she perfects the use of a variety of instruments, arrangements, and her own voice to deliver something different in every song. “Kiss Big” subverts the problem of every song on the album bleeding into one another until they’re difficult to distinguish while still being recognizably a part of the same larger body of work.
The commonalities across the album that make it cohesive are most strikingly, Reddy’s vocals, which function as an instrument in and of themselves. The influences of Big Thief and Catatonia are heavily evident in the control of tenor and tone across the different songs to compliment the overall music arrangement. An artist she reminds me of vocally is Morgan Weidinger in her 2021 album “Tangerine”. Another continuity across Reddy’s album is that every song as well as across the album is the use of crescendos. The album as a whole begins slowly and gutturally and ends with an explosion of instruments and Reddy’s voice which is a feature self-contained within each individual track as well. Self-containment is also a feature of the four of wands.
Lyrically, the album is not the strongest but it needn’t be because the heavy lifting is clearly done by the instrumentation and vocals. Repetition in the lyrics is another overarching feature of the album but Reddy’s strong control over her voice makes each iteration somewhat unique. A line that stood out to me was “wander the city, thinking it’s empty without you” which succinctly suggests the depth of her relationship knowing the context of Dublin. The line is from the last track on the album, “Crave”, which is also the most jarringly different of the lot. It starts out as a spoken word in a raspy and untrained voice while also carrying the most vivid descriptions of the relationship she is singing about thus far. However, the song ends similar to the rest of the tracks, building in intensity until it ends in a mostly positive note. Note, in “Crave”, she still speaks of her relationship in the present tense. Once again, descriptions of their future wedding and proposals reminded me of the couple waving their wedding bouquet in the four of wands.
The defining song of the album I wouldn’t say is its namesake, “Kiss Big”, but rather, “Dead Arm”, the sixth song, which incorporates a little bit of something present in every song across the album, perfectly encapsulating its themes and tone in one go. In the following track, “Gorgeous Thing”, Reddy sings the line “I’d do it all again”, which makes it clear to me that the album, like the four of wands, is about the celebration of something which lived rather than an eulogy for its demise.
