Kris Kelly - Cracked Porcelain

 

Psychedelica. It's got champions in artists like Tame Impala, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Animal Collective and many others. It's pretty amazing to hear an artist that identifies as queer making his mark in the genre. There's not enough representation and we are sorely underserved in this corner of the musical universe but to have Kris Kelly creating music for queer people by queer people in this genre is magical.

"Cracked Porcelain" is a sonically gorgeous landscape in which our artist gets to create a world of love and sex and unconventional experiences. In Kris' words the song is, "the story of two gay men who find freedom in defining their relationship in an unconventional way, but who end up getting lost in the revelry and ultimately drive each other apart. I think the LGBTQ community has a unique opportunity to redefine our relationship with sex within our partnerships. Not having the traditional ways of defining a healthy partnership forced onto us grants us freedom to discover it for ourselves; but it also comes with great responsibility, and I think we often fail. In the song, the two men fulfill all of their personal desires, and get lost with the help of alcohol and drugs, but forget to care about each other, neglecting the needs of their relationship. In that seductive lifestyle, it’s easy for them to use sex, drugs, and alcohol to cover up the issues they just don’t want to deal with. It feels like ‘freedom’ but are they really in control? What are the boundaries that protect the relationship? A careful balance is required in order to nurture both carnal desires and spiritual connection with another human being (if that’s something that you value). When things are out of balance, suffering is inevitable. That’s what happens in “Cracked Porcelain”."

I think that as someone that identifies as gay, this song means a lot more to me than a lot of other tracks I've run across lately because of the implications and experiences it creates and just how easily it is for me to identify with the antagonists in the song. I've been there. I've been swept up in the rush of endorphins and serotonin that's created when you get to get entangled in someone else, especially after so many years of being repressed due to social anxiety, mores, and the overwhelming need to fly under the radar....but when that time comes and you're wrapped up in someone else; bodies exploring, hearts beating together and you give yourself permission to experience all those things - it's intoxicating. It, in itself, becomes addictive and you NEED more and when you can't chase that rush anymore then you find substitutes for those feelings and those wants. It's a slippery slope and we as LGBTQ+ people don't have the most positive role models for helping us navigate those beginning relationships and tend to make all the wrong decisions when we are first encountering choices. But the beauty is that they are our mistakes to make and as long as we have the wherewithal to learn from them they subtly turn from mistakes to growth opportunities.

Kris Kelly has a beautiful voice. He's got a hypnotic quality about him that is perfectly suited for this genre and it's an incredible match. I don't want to hear him singing any other type of music because the Technicolor rainbow of imagery he paints with his voice and artistry is brilliant. His music is the soundtrack to my dreams and it takes me to places I've never been before and I think he's just about one of the most important artists I've had the pleasure of getting to hear in a very long time.

Kris Kelly on the Web