Album Review: Kesha, . (Period)

Sixty seconds into listening to Kesha’s latest album and I’m double-checking to make sure I haven’t accidentally turned on Björk’s Vulnicura.

With a wash of strings, keys and siren-call vocals, ‘Freedom’ introduces the singer’s first independently-released album, Period, before descending into a four-on-the-floor house rhapsody. After a decades-long legal battle with her former producer Dr. Luke, where she alleged abuse and employment discrimination, this new album finds Kesha finally speaking to us on her own terms.

Even while her previous LP, Gag Order, marked Kesha’s first release since the lawsuit, the pop star told Paper it wasn’t until now that she truly felt "free", both creatively and legally, to speak her truth. With this, it’s hardly a coincidence that Period is being released on US Independence Day.

Steeped in EDM, hyperpop and house – with flickers of country and folk in the margins – Kesha’s sixth album boasts a dynamic palette perfectly suited to any and all dancefloors. The carnivalesque ‘Joyride’, which dropped exactly one year before the album, is a feisty polka number, packed with bursts of half-step accordions, modulated vocals and swirling synths.

Period thus documents Kesha’s ambitions to spread her wings and explore new sonic horizons. On ‘Yippie-Ki-Yay’, the star blends country-pop stylings with a hip-hop flow and bubblegum textures.

Then, she veers off the propulsive course on the heart-rending ballad ‘Delusional’, where the singer muses on her renewed sense of freedom: “Look at me shining / My stars aligning / You thought you'd bring me down / Baby you're delusional”.

It’s a ringing declaration of newfound selfhood, be it love or defiance or reclamation. At any rate, Kesha makes sure you feel it on your skin.

8/10

Out now