Kid Dakota and the Americana dystopian history or future of "Age of Roaches" [Album Review]

 

"what do you think they did with all the Minuteman missiles?"

The title track of Kid Dakota's Americana dystopian album "Age of Roaches" moves, at first, like some kind of Eastern Bloc cotillion in a decrepit ballroom. The bubbling guitar notes, simple synths and sharp guitar strikes propelled by military paradiddles feel unsettling and then as Darren Jackson's (aka Kid Dakota's) artful croon begins, "What do you think they did with all the Minuteman missiles? Did they come and take them at night when we were all fast asleep?" The feeling is at once grand but dire. There is a definite "Mommy, we're not in Kansas anymore?'" and if we were, Jackson's dark narrative speaks of planes dropping chemicals to stop the growing of... crops, or life. The dark art rock thing happening here feels like an opera of sorts or the beginning of one. ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) technically around since the 40's, at least conceptually, seemed to flourish in the 70's as the so called Minuteman missiles carrying nuclear payloads were scattered inside missile silos ostensibly across the great plains. Thousands of them were decommissioned over time but there are still hundreds on American soil and anyway, the protests against them seemed to evaporate as these missiles were situated on unseen submarines. But as I listen to the rest of this album, with the heaviness centered on prairies and some of the songs feeling like country ballads of sorts, I am sensing that the "Age of Roaches" is a down turned diatribe on former times, on cold war dick measuring contests and the misunderstood consequences of chemical weaponry set against the foreboding countenance of those missile silos across America's farm land. 

Listening to the sad broken waltz of "Prairie Flowers" with a 50's-ish movie or teleplay as added cold fodder is a nightmare of past truths and maybe future consequences. Then you have the sweeping almost spaghetti western serenade of "Two Days" that, again, now feels like a hazy cast and beautifully drawn play about the effects of some sort of chemical attack, underhanded or in plain sight. The lilt of the guitar strums and Jackson's vocals make me think of 90's Radiohead in a lovely way. Now I am thinking that these songs in total may not be about any set decade in the past but more about our eventual nature as destroyers or enablers of people in power who can push buttons that should not be pushed.

Within all the darkness there are moments of whimsy like a single blooming flower on a barren landscape. Such a flower (for me) is the track, "Futurecide" even though it still is decidedly dark. I think I feel a lightness because there is a sense of defiant wanderlust amid the almost 60's double time beat and a sense that there might be some light amid the muck, even if it might be in death. The dancing lead lines and new wave / post punk affections with dissonant falls are lovely, yes, in a sad way.  

Concept albums are destined to have sister songs, tracks that either feel like distant cousins or bipolar opposites and thematically or sonically connected. I feel like the dreamy travelogue "Cold War" feels like that song to the first title track, "Age of Roaches". The tracks hold hands, the plucking guitar rhythms seems to co-exist. "Cold War" feels more broken and detached and ultimately more cinematic in scope. Maybe a befitting ending as credits roll even though it is not the final song. The final song is, in fact, "Stephen Hawking", a song that as the coda emotionally shape shifts often. It trades the darkness for dashes of that aforementioned whimsy. It, in the end takes the conceptual abyss and turns the unmistakable destructive DNA of human beings (and of "Age of Roaches" as an opera) and turns it into something surreal. It is what I am feeling anyway. It is as if the characters here can, now, only exist in a dream.

-Robb Donker Curtius

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THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

https://www.facebook.com/kiddakota

https://kiddakota.band/

https://kiddakota.bandcamp.com/


Kid Dakota is the musical moniker of Darren Jackson.

Kid Dakota, art rock, indie rock, dream pop, alternative rock, album "Age of Roaches", concept album, nuclear threat, Minuteman missiles, singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist

[Album Review]