In Review: Kesha, HAIM, Lorde, Lukas Nelson
Plus short takes on Benson Boone, Barbra Streisand and James McMurtry
Apologies for the gap in newsletters: summer schedules can be difficult to navigate, particularly when travel and kids are involved.
Kesha—Period [2025]
Maybe maturation was bound to be difficult for Kesha, a pop star who specialized in the thrilling transience of youth at the height of her popularity. Give her credit for embracing ephemeral rushes while she was in the midst of all that excitement: her last entry into the Billboard Top Ten was called "Die Young." Shortly after "Die Young" went to number two in 2012, Kesha became embroiled in a grueling legal battle against her original producer Dr. Luke. A complicated and ugly series of lawsuits finally settled out of court in 2023, allowing her to leave Luke's Kemosabe Records behind at last. Kesha released three records in the interim, ranging from the self-styled empowerment of Rainbow to the stultifying art-pop of Gag Order, each a conscious effort to find a path that led her far away from Dr. Luke. Period is something else entirely: a reclamation of her original persona. Filled with big beats and pulsating with color, Period consciously taps into the sensibility of Animal/Cannibal but cannily avoids outright nostalgia. Kesha revels in red lights, bad choices and a good buzz, but she's not brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack. She's a ringleader, or as she crows on "Joyride"—a giddy carnivalesque single powered by a demented polka hook and vocal harmonies straight out of Queen —she's now "Mother," a designation that hints that she's not seeking to chase trends: she's sticking to her strengths, welcoming some new fashion but only if it's flattering. Case in point: almost all of the album's twelve songs are succinct, many lasting a bit under three minutes. The concision accentuates Kesha's hooks and humor, intensifying her excursions into disco ("Love Forever") and electropop ("Boy Crazy"), while unexpectedly adding some potency to her occasional ballads. All this precision adds up: Period moves faster and punches harder than anything she's released since Cannibal.
HAIM—I Quit [2025]
To frame it in reductive (but not inaccurate) terms: I Quit finds HAIM backsliding from Tango In The Night to Tusk, with the trio attempting to strip away the gloss to find a raw nerve. Blame some of this on the band's split from producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who departed once he and Danielle Haim separated. Her production partner for I Quit is Rostam Batmanglij, who hardly specializes in rustic textures but nevertheless allows HAIM to loosen up ever so slightly. Thing is, the trio writes songs that cry out for some measure of gloss.