I Am #KRISTINKONTROL
Jacket: We Are Young Jacket by Fringe; Boots: Sigerson Morrison
“I’m very anti-brand.”
No stranger to the concept of “rip it up and start again,” Kristin Welchez has already begun the press cycle for X-Communicate, the first record under her brand new moniker, Kristin Kontrol. The name change dropped on a January evening via Instagram; it’s a short video of her at a photo shoot with the simple caption: “I AM #KRISTINKONTROL.” A song plays in the background. The commanding cry of her voice is recognizable, but the music is unlike anything attached to it before, a driving arpeggiated synth over a sizzling disco beat. No explanation was needed; the record she had been working on and hinting at for the past several months was going to involve a full reinvention.
“I don’t wanna be bored. I like having to work hard.”
For the past seven years or so, we have known Kristin as Dee Dee, the icy femme fatale fronting Dum Dum Girls, easily one of the best groups to come out the small, ‘60s-indebted garage band resurgence that emerged from New York City at the turn of the decade. Fellow comrades like Crystal Stilts and Vivian Girls eventually drifted to implosion, but Dum Dum Girls always had the benefit of being a solo project despite the pluralized name and girl gang press photo image.
Dum Dum Girls’ last album, 2014’s Too True contained some of the best songs Kristin’s ever written—the haunting mid-tempo ballad “Are You Okay?”, the resolute rocker “In the Wake of You,” and the skin-tingling groover “Too True to Be Good.” But it was a record that broke the formula in ways that didn’t land with critics, and subsequently found the band spinning its wheels. “It was very fractured,” Kristin says. “I think I was trying really
hard to sort of mature the Dum Dum Girls thing, and instead of maybe expanding the way I thought I was expanding, I ended up hyper-focusing.” The garage rock elements that had defined the Dum Dums’ early records were toned down in favor of motorik beats and smokey goth rock. Kristin has always been a fan of ornate productions—she’s covered both the Smiths and Strawberry Switchblade on previous records—and her stab at them worked for her. But Too True was a far cry from the beloved “girls in the garage” vibe that had come to be the Dum Dum trademark; and it asked for listeners to appreciate the songwriter over a previously established aesthetic. Fans remained fans, but the band’s appeal seemed to be touching the ceiling.
Jacket: Andrew Marc Leather Jacket; Pants: Jose Duran; Shoes: Ivanka Trump