“Like a Woman Can” – Kim Taylor
Equal parts stomp and grace, “Like a Woman Can” spiders its way into your body with its minimal urgings and dusky vibe. I think it’s that hollowed-out stamping sound, kicking in around 0:32, that really hooks me and makes me engage in a bit of office dancing. To show you how centrally the song is organized around that elusive effect, which sounds kind of like clapping hands crossed with marching feet, see how the sound moves from background to foreground at 1:36, and how this is when everything begins to make perfect sense.
Kim Taylor has a convincing timelessness about her; she seems the kind of singer/songwriter who can disappear for years and later return as if in mid-sentence. In “Like a Woman Can,” she has come back to us with something of particular importance to say; in interviews, she has called it nothing less than a “protest song,” penned by someone not merely tired of the persistence of garden-variety misogyny but aware of how much we have to gain by getting past it already. It’s 2013, people.
Taylor was first featured here back in December 2005 and then again in August 2010. “Like a Woman Can” is a song from her fourth studio album, Love’s a Dog, which she recorded with drummer Devon Ashley and producer/multi-instrumentalist, and long-time musical associate, Jimi Zhivago. MP3 via Magnet Magazine. The album, funded via Kickstarter, was self-released earlier this month. You can listen to it, and buy it if you’d like, from Kim’s web site.
Fingertips 