Cover Art for Amythyst Kiah’s Newest Album; Still+Bright
Artist: Amythyst Kiah
Album: Still+Bright
With lyrics like a revolution and social commentary in musical form, Amythyst Kiah’s new album touches on deep and thought-provoking topics that absolutely entrance a listener. However, despite the catchy rhythms and folk blues inspired tunes, the musical composition leaves lots to be desired. Comprised of a number of hits and misses, this album contains some amazing, expertly written songs that deserve to be praised and some that may need to be brought back to the drawing board.
As an up-and-coming artist, Amythyst Kiah releases music centering around elements of alternative and country folk music with deep lyrics based on Kiah’s personal journey. Kiah has been featured in a number of magazines for both personal releases and songs released as a part of the Our Native Daughters artist group known for their Grammy Nominated song “Black Myself.” With a vocal rasp reminiscent of Janice Joplin and musical style similar to Tracy Chapman, Amythyst Kiah has a bright future ahead in the music industry.
Amongst the 12 songs featured on the album, deep well thought out songs contrasted songs that sounded underproduced and lacked character making them far from unique. Some of the strongest and most beautifully executed songs on the album included “Die Slowly Without Complaint“, “Empire of Love“, and “Peoples Prayer“.
“Die Slowly Without Complaint “had an immediately attention-grabbing riff and beat that felt like it could have been pulled right from an epic fight scene in a western movie. Featuring Avi Kaplan from Pentatonix (one of a number of artists who appear as guest features on his newest album), this song leaned much more towards a Country, R&B, and Rock style than the other songs released serving as a great palette cleanser mid album. The harmony Kiah and Kaplan achieved in the chorus was both haunting and entrancing. It drew the listener in further, maintaining the grip on their attention that the powerful backing track had achieved. Kaplan was an amazing addition to the song, further expanding on the storytelling aspect. This song uses a surrealist view of shadows stealing people’s souls to depict how societies thrive on conformity and suppression of creativity.
During Kaplans lyric, the phrase “they work to the bone and come back down and wake back up when the shadow comes ‘round” highlights the idea that people live to work as hard as they can in order to survive with a few hours to rest. As soon as the sun rises, causing shadows to return, they must return to work and repeat the same steps again. Commenting on the cyclical and often monotonous nature of human lives within society, Amythyst Kiah and Avi Kaplan do an amazing job creating a captivating song and musical atmosphere.
“Empire of Love” was a beautiful opinion piece regarding Amythyst Kiah’s view on religion and a journey of self discovery. This song boasts a captivating chorus that will be stuck in the listeners head for weeks. The music video for this song was recently released, having been published on October 25, 2024. It is a cinematic masterpiece channeling nostalgic styling and excellent visualization of the song’s lyrics. Throughout the course of the video, the watcher observes as Kiah studies and considers a number of varying religious options; however none seem to fit. While continuing to climb the mountain, Kiah discovers new religions and belief systems thinking they may feel more right, inevitably, though, not identifying with any of them. Eventually reaching the top plateau of the mountain, the sun begins to shine through the clouds marking a breakthrough moment in the journey. Kiah realizes that religious beliefs are not necessary to feel happy and fulfilled, instead choosing to focus on soul and feelings over preset religious notions. Upon throwing a book representing letting go of the confining nature of religious rules. The book then morphs into a bird symbolizing the full release of this pressure. Allowing these feelings to soar away, Kiah seems happier and relieved. No longer trying to fit into an unrealistic ideal that felt incorrect and upsetting. Overall, the “Empire of Love” song and music video were expertly paired and an excellent demonstration of Amythyst Kiah’s view on religion and the importance of listening to the feelings of one’s soul.
A Still From Amythyst Kiah’s Music Video for “Empire of Love”
“The music video is absolutely worth a watch.
“People’s Prayer” is the concluding song of the album and serves as a powerful summary of the album’s contents. One of the slower ballads of the album, this song serves as Amythyst Kiah’s commentary on the concepts of life and death describing how people cling onto what life they can until it is gone. This song emphasizes how important it is to be open, caring, and understanding towards people. Inevitably, everyone is human, going through different struggles and circumstances but similar to one another. “People’s prayer” highlights the importance of being compassionate towards human error and the less perfect elements of being human since they are beyond a person’s control. The backing music was beautifully put together at a slower pace allowing the gravity and depth of the lyrics presented to truly soak into the listeners mind. This song was an incredible conclusion tying together the themes of life, religion, the human struggle, relationships, and death that were brought forward throughout the course of the album.
The positives of this album however, were equally balanced by the less complete and repetitive melodies. A few of the songs on the album were simply unremarkable, namely, “Space”, “Play God and Destroy the World”, “Silk and Petals”, and “Dead Stars”. These songs felt generic, uninspired, and lacked any truly gripping elements that made a listener want to finish the song. It was unfortunate since the content of all four songs seemed to have touched on personal topics to Amythyst Kiah, but the lyrics still felt like they lacked depth. Furthermore, the songs that completely missed the mark were “Gods Under the Mountains”, “Dark Matter”, and “Lets See Ourselves Out”.
“Gods Under the Mountains” was the type of song a listener really wanted to love; however, there were some elements missing that made it just fall short of the mark. While it had an attractive beat and an overall great presence, the lyrical tempo did not match that of the music’s composition. The vocals felt rushed and excessively quick moving at a pace that was a few beats faster than the songs rhythm. It created an anti-harmonic separation that made listening difficult and harder to focus on. The song’s lyrics themselves had great writing and content, but because of the awkward pacing it felt difficult to keep up and follow what was being said. This caused the dramatic effect of the almost story-like lyricism to be lost. Moreover, the lyrics got more repetitive as the song went on and it almost felt like it should have ended sooner than it did. Having longer songs on an album can be great when the lyrics and musical writing allow for it; however, this song did not feel like it warranted the extra length of an almost four minute feature. One great example of a longer song that is able to continually grip a listener’s attention is “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. Despite its lengthy near six-minute time stamp, the song never fails to enthrall the listener and tell a great story. “Gods Under The Mountain” tries to achieve a similar level of storytelling, yet falls flat due to the repetitively basic backing track and the lack of a strong chorus. Some lyrics felt repetitive or unnecessary, disrupting the beat and flow of the song. Had the song been cut off around the two-and-a-half-minute mark it may have had a stronger impact and felt more properly finished instead of the rushed and mismatched track it ended up being.
The most surprising part of the album were tracks nine and ten that seemed to blend together to form one single toned nightmare. When “Dark Matter” ended, the transition between its final chords and track “Let’s See Ourselves Out” was almost seamless. While with strong songs this would make for a neat feature, with these songs it did not play into the album’s favor. These songs felt plain and unfinished. They almost felt like a demo pre-release that lacked the finesse and execution that would normally be present in a properly mixed song. “Dark Matter” was yet again another case of the vocals not feeling like they matched the backing tracks despite Amythyst Kiah’s beautiful singing. The vocals were mixed so strongly that at times the musical composition felt lost and unheard. The listener had to strain to hear the guitar and beat behind the vocal tracks during some of the chorus segments. Moreover, the vocals felt like they were being pushed farther to cover for the lack of creative guitar riffs and drum fills that would again be present in a polished song. “Let’s See Ourselves Out” follows a similar pattern of feeling bare and incomplete. The vocal tempo is slightly slower, however the song’s composition feels so similar to “Dark Matter” that it becomes easy for a listener to get them mixed up. The lyrics are basic and feels like the song might be entirely one long chorus. There are so few lyrical changes or verses in between that the chorus becomes almost irritatingly constant. Both of these songs just left so much to be desired, especially after hearing such amazing tracks on the album like “Empire of Love” or “People’s Prayer”. It was unfortunate to see songs that felt like they were produced in a rush take away from such a great album otherwise.
Overall, the album had quite a few amazingly powerful tracks, but they seemed to get lost in the sea of monotone unpolished or unremarkable songs. Some of the mixing felt rushed while production on some of the others was beautifully done. The main issue with the mixing on a lot of the tracks was a lack of attention-grabbing changes in riffs or drum fills that can elevate a listener’s experience and keep them engaged. Despite these issues in production, the content matter of the songs was strong and relatable to a wide listening audience. It felt like the audience was watching Amythyst Kiah’s personal journey of self discovery happen in real time. The visualization in the newest music video was amazing and beautifully represented this journey as well, although it felt a little cliche at times.
Amythyst Kiah Tour Dates Via Kiah’s Post on Bandsintown
This album is well worth a listen for any music lover as Amythyst Kiah combined elements of a lot of different genres and topics wonderfully. Most listeners can relate to this depiction of the human experience in some regard and will likely find at least one track on this album that stands out to them. Amythyst Kiah is currently on tour with the first date having been October 11, 2024. The tour continues until May 17, 2025, leaving plenty of time for new or returning fans to find a show nearest to them. The only Canadian date was recently announced as being at The Concert Hall in Toronto, Ontario on May 15, 2025. Tickets start at $15 and can be purchased through Amythyst Kiah’s site: https://www.amythystkiah.com/#tour
