Review: Bitter’s Kiss “My God”

Bitter’s Kiss is Chloe Baker’s showcase of her talents as a singer and songwriter. For the project, Chloe works with her father to record and produce the music. Recently she recorded and made a video for the song ‘My God,’ an introspective examination of various manifestations of belief and the systems that uphold these various belief structures.

The song opens with a simple low piano note playing at a measured interval (think ‘A Day in the Life’ right after the orchestral crescendo but slower, less jaunty) and builds upon itself from that barest of skeleton from there, layering on guitar, drums, horn and, of course, Chloe’s vocals. I could go ahead now at this point and make the comparison to other female folk singers (Regina Spektor or Edie Brickell), but as off point musically as this comparison might sound it rings truest: her vocals most closely resemble the young Vince Neil on Motley Crue’s debut album ‘Too Fast for Love,’ except, more restrained, gentler, and trained.

She sings, “I want to choose the right path but I don’t know which rules to follow,” in ‘My God,’ with an inflection that implies it is absurd to think you can know the “right path.” It’s gratifying seeing a young songwriter tackle such thorny topics as theology and philosophy, and Bitter’s Kiss takes on, and approaches to, these subjects will only mature as time passes. These are the kinds of songs that could help sensitive and intelligent young people as they go through their inevitable existential crisis.

On the song ‘The Rope,’ a very mellow, slowly plucked song with very little change dynamically throughout save for the brief appearance of an electric guitar that, in the suffocating atmosphere of the song, can’t find in itself the will to stick around long. The song seems to be about overly zealous religious belief, asking, “How many things can go on in a day that stay on your knees so long?” It then goes on to give the advice, “There’s a quicker way to heaven if you can find yourself a rope.” This might appear abundantly and darkly cynical on the surface but the sorrow in the song’s melody counteracts that base cynicism and expresses it more as impotent anger, which is appropriate since it is a song about the suicide of one of Chloe’s cousins from a deeply religious part of the family.

“Isn’t it almost like a dream,” she repeatedly sings on the chorus for ‘Friday Nights’, eventually adding “You’re living” after several repetitions. In the video a father chooses to commit suicide so his heart may be transplanted into his dying daughter. This might be a bit too much on the nose, “I will borrow the rest of your life,” but her emotional delivery makes it all work despite the overwrought mawkishness of the subject matter. One thing can be said for sure, the song’s got a lot of heart, and that’s not a pun. It’s not, really it’s not, and Bitter’s Kiss has a lot of heart too.

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