Three Years Later, kendall :3's dirt Still Shines

Today, many may know kendall :3 through “blue shift”, the final track from her 2018 album hey that was used as the soundtrack to the 2023 animated series Fiona and Cake’s finale. That album formed the core elements of her style – plush electronica, glitchy experimentation, and masterful pop songwriting spreading out from the center, with hey being one of that year’s most exciting debuts. But the best way into kendall :3’s music isn’t the album with her most well-known track; instead, it’s her 2021 follow-up, dirt, that guts her digital pop and fills it with chamber strings and thrashing deconstructed club, balancing gorgeous electronica with classical grandeur. Three years since its release, there’s still no other album like it, kendall :3’s dynamic music shifting between genres without losing dirt’s unique character.

dirt’s Western classical elements are the stem for every other sound to bloom off, richly orchestrated strings and woodwinds filling the space around all of kendall :3’s vocal and synth textures. After the opening title track’s pizzicato lead strings and gorgeous orchestration, “waiting” immediately kicks the album into gear with all of kendall :3’s singularities: warped, rich cello and lightweight flute sit under her gentle vocals before the second half explodes into blown-out, punky noise rock – it’s dirt’s most volatile track and yet one of its loveliest. The rest of the album doesn’t reach nearly the same intensity, but rather than “waiting” becoming a one-off explosion, the subtleties found in the twelve songs following are enhanced by it: “team player” immediately after pairs its traditional verse-chorus pop structure with droning violins and a warped bass, and the handful of piano and voice interludes throughout help split the album into distinct sections even with its brisk runtime. The album shines in its softer, chamber-infused tracks like “prickly pear” and “pin,” the former’s spellbinding arrangements and the latter’s moody waltz alien and heartfelt at once, the tension between desire and the fears accompanying it providing kendall :3 vast amounts of ground to cover. Her music is tactile and easy to sink into, and it makes all of dirt’s peculiarities all the more delightful.

Her lyrics give more specificity to that tension and release, exploring the anxiety of feeling restless and unsure of yourself and the greater fear of being seen. Album highlight “blood” contrasts its brash, mechanical production with the intoxication of romance, its violent imagery contextualized with desperate intimacy (“Braving through this static / Tear me like a stuffed toy / Rip me like elastic”) - compare that to the isolation of “waiting”, and the connective tissue between the album’s diverse tracklist begins to form. kendall :3’s writing is as tactile and richly embellished as her production, “screaming tectonic pains” (“prickly pear) and “hiking boots that rise from the snow to my waist” (“zastruga”) enhancing the heavier feelings spoken of in their respective songs, dirt’s fantasy concepts extended from the instrumentation to the songwriting and fully tying all its elements together. kendall :3’s facilitation of both her musicality and poeticism delivers the world of dirt fully realized from start to finish, a glowing forest of chamber electronica that captures you and makes you hunt for it at once. 

“Braving through this static / Tear me like a stuffed toy / Rip me like elastic"

Three years since its release and kendall :3’s new work after it, dirt still stands as one of her strongest achievements, a half hour album that feels double its length without ever repeating an idea and the confidence to provide something entirely new and rare within the contemporary music scene blending pop, classical, and electronica and until they’re impossible to separate across these fourteen songs. Whether a piano piece or some strikingly orchestrated ambient, kendall :3 never loses sight of her vision, allowing dirt to be bloody and elegant and unorthodox in its approach to art pop, an experience that’s not lost any of its charm with time. dirt is available for purchase on kendall :3’s Bandcamp, along with listening on all streaming services.