When Kiwi singer-songwriter Kimbra announced the release of her upcoming third album Primal Heart (19 January 2018) to her fans via email in September, she promised that it would move away from the "decorative maximalism of [her] past sonic adventures", in pursuit of "a core emotion that unfolded with texture and mystery". Produced by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Goldfrapp, Future Islands and Blondie), "Everybody Knows", the lead single from the album, is nevertheless no textbook example of sonic minimalism. It does, however, foregrounds her vocals in a way that her previous two albums have not, given their emphasis on overt sonic experimentalism and eclecticism.
The track's electronic production, '80s-inspired beats and xylophones allow her to fully demonstrate her impressive vocal range as she turns the tables on someone who wronged and/or betrayed her: "Everybody knows about what you do/ Everybody saw and sold the truth/ I was young and gullible/ But baby I grew/ Now the whole world's watching you". The song's narrative (a feminist David-vs-Goliath reckoning following a soured May-December relationship) comes across as being remarkably attuned to the present post-Weinstein reckoning of sexual abusers in various industries being brought to justice.
This is not a coincidence. Kimbra recently confirmed, via an open letter on Tumblr addressed to the infamous producer himself, that the track's telling references ('Money moans calls you home/ Vacant eyes they won't tell a soul') were inspired by instances in her past where she “felt reduced and disrespected by the actions of men who had more influence, power and ability to steer a situation in the direction of their benefit”. While clearly more confrontational than ever before, the track’s production comes across as being too exuberant, too pristine and too liberatory to mirror the darkness she hints at in her verses. The emotions of shame, humiliation, anger and desperation recede altogether in a kind of sonic amnesia, which mainly foregrounds a celebration of the moment of justice.
The reworked track by Norwegian duo Apothek thankfully made way for a fuller sense of foreboding, ominousness and trauma to emerge. Kimbra herself was surprised by how it cast the song in an entirely new light: “It evoked new depth in the lyrics and had this hypnotizing patience to it with a quiet kind of violence and also a soft, strange intimacy”. The buoyancy of the earlier version has been punctured by telling stretches of silence, with warped acoustic sounds that evoke the psychological trauma implied by verses like ‘Hands to the bone, hands to the heart/ bodies alone, they hide in the dark/ But is it a fight worth fighting? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh’. The sense of victory is still faintly present, albeit far less immediate and certain as before. The second music video, produced via a collaboration with Safe Horizon, creates a realistic picture of domestic violence (reminiscent of Alt-J’s “Breezeblocks”, but with a more optimistic ending) that fleshes out their grittier interpretation of the track.
