Although not a total departure from her 2014 debut, Sound of A Woman, it’s clear that while Kiesza was on hiatus, she began to veer away from the Haddaway/CeCe Peniston/C + C Music Factory-inspired sound she was striving for (and achieved) with the first record. Maybe some of that had to do with plenty of time to transition into a different sonic realm while she was holed up recovering from a major car accident that occurred while riding in the back of an Uber in Toronto circa 2017. With six months of her recovery requiring her to be in a dark room to help heal her traumatic brain injury, Kiesza wasn’t sure she would ever return to music again. Mercifully, she has and the result is Crave–not to be confused with the Madonna song of the same name. But perhaps what we can confuse Kiesza’s vibe with is early era Madonna, when synths were king, as were bathetic love lyrics so effusive you feel they might pop right out of the speakers.
To that end, the record begins with “Run Renegade,” a perfect example of that ebullience that can’t be contained as Kiesza declares, “I let my love run renegade/Gotta let me heart make its mistakes.” Her sense of vitality is perhaps so pronounced because, having come this close to the reaper, she knows the full extent of the joy of still being alive. Of having a chance at true love again. With this in mind, we transition to “All of the Feelings,” a song that does, indeed, give us all of them as she intermixes the lyrics of pop powerhouses Mariah Carey and Spice Girls in the form of, “When you touch my body, yeah/How do you know what I want?/Like lightning creeping in/Electric on my skin/When you’re all up on me, ah/Maybe that’s when two becomes one.” Ostensibly, part of her brain injury included the gift of recalling enough encyclopedic knowledge of pop to make all of its elements her own. And as she speaks on “getting all of the feelings back to make [her] believe in love again,” we ourselves can’t help but catch the same feels, so infectious is the track–and, in truth, it’s one of the better things to be infected by these days.
The eponymous “Crave” continues the 80s pop on steroids feel with producer Electric (consisting of Henrik Barman Michelsen and Edvard Førre Erfjord), best known for working with Little Mix. And yes, in many respects, Kiesza is like a girl group of one. “Give me your love,” she repeats like a lovesick crack addict (or like Madonna on “Give Me All Your Luvin’”), urgent and earnest in illustrating her need for unconditional affection.
“Can’t Be Saved” slows down the pace a bit before picking it up again to re-create the signature brand of 80s cheesiness that Kiesza has mastered so effortlessly–and what’s more, gets away with by way of her sincerity (sorry Carly Rae Jepsen, you ain’t the only one capable). Lending the imagery evoked by the song a certain intergalactic feel–since everyone can only hope space is an alternative option to existence on Earth–Kiesza sings, “Flashlight/That’s what you are to my dark night/So bright that it’s blinding my heart/But I can’t resist that part/Outer space, you take me there/Stars burning together/And honestly, nothing feels better/With you, I could burn forever.” With its echoes of “Lucky Star” imagery (as also present on the recent remix of “Levitating”), Kiesza is doing her damnedest to be impossible to discern from a pop star who actually did release music in the 1980s.
“Love Me With Your Lie” (so close to the title “Love the Way You Lie”) showcases another instance of Kiesza’s knack for intermixing the biblical verse of pop and dance lyrics of the past and making them her own (as is the case with use of the phrases, “Kill me softly” and “rhythm of the night”). Not everyone is capable of carrying this technique off (Lana Del Rey is also someone who can, with so many borrowed lyrics at this point, it’s difficult to count), but Kiesza achieves it–at least by sheer virtue of offering us beats we can’t be mad at to distract from any perceived lyrical shortcomings by way of lack of originality.
While The Cure might have declared sadly, “Boys Don’t Cry,” Kiesza assures this isn’t the case on “When Boys Cry.” As the most politically tinged song on the album, Kiesza gets ahead of the curve on a trend that’s sure to ramp up in the future about how men need to not be so boxed in by the stereotypical expectations of their gender (just another way in which they will manage to take the conversation about women’s equality out of the spotlight). So it is that Kiesza instructs, “When boys cry, boys cry/You gotta learn what to see in their dry eyes, dry eyes/And you may have to listen/Through gritted teeth, gritted teeth/’Cause you don’t always see it/When boys cry, boys cry.” Ah fuck, just another way we gotta cater to these bastards. In the accompanying video released earlier this year, Kiesza appeared in a glittery getup with an umbrella (complete with matching “glitter” thanks to the LED light-up pattern) to show that boys hide so much emotion on the inside, if they ever did unleash it we would all surely need an industrial strength umbrella to shelter from their tears.
Speaking of the sky busting open, “Sky Ain’t The Limit” follows, and features un certain Thompson Twins meets Pet Shop Boys sound. Emotional yet danceable (the running theme of the record), Kiesza pours her heart out yet again with, “Sky ain’t the limit, no/I got better places to go/Livin’ out a childhood dream/That’s bigger than the world I’m in/Breakin’ every bone in me/To find out who I really can be/But I want you holding me/I kept my humanity, for now.” Seemingly the most overt nod to the events of her car accident, it’s a strong lead-in to her next track, the only non-dance oriented one on Crave.
What would an 80s tribute be without an ultimate power ballad? “Love Never Dies” is definitely that. Filled with the Bonnie Tyler-esque drama of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” not just in the ardent chorus, Kiesza also paints a fatalist picture in her verses, asserting, “I’ve been cut by the blades of trust/My proof is in the scars/Walked my eyes through the blinding dust to save a lonely heart/Held up my faith like an iron fist/Only you knew it was delicate/If my crusade is without a source/My wounds will set the course.” There’s even that signature 80s electric guitar to punctuate it all.
Not wanting to let her listeners go too long without a beat to dance to, “Dance With Your Best Friend” recalibrates the tone of the record. Featuring LICK DROP (who also produced this song and “Sky Ain’t the Limit”), Cocanina and Shan Vincent de Paul), the song offers traces of what Sofi Tukker so often does in layering on the collaborative voices. The lyrics of this piece are among the most visually redolent as Kiesza describes, “Sweat, sweat, sweat, we’re animals/Dancing in a midnight jungle/Gone wild and our nature says it all/Teeth out, we’re wild and it’s alright/And we’re lost in the strobe, making silhouettes.” Elsewhere, the blatant reverence for the 80s continues as Shan Vincent de Paul quotes Sugarhill Gang with, “Like up jumps the boogie, the boogie jumps the beat.” Kiesza and LICK DROP also give reference to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s pivotal album by singing, “We’re psycho, we’re like candy.” So yes, respect for the oeuvre of the 80s is real throughout the record, therefore it only makes sense to conclude with a track that expresses as much via its allusions.
A bonus track edition of Crave adds “Sweet Love” afterward, the song Kiesza released as the first single after her accident. Accompanied by a video that came out with it in 2019, it’s not as 80s as the rest of the material on the album, but it still fits in neatly with the songs–at times conjuring comparisons to Tove Lo’s “Sweettalk My Heart.”
The final bonus track, “You’re The Best,” was also released in 2019 with a video that found Kieza back in the place that launched her to fame: Williamsburg. Except, this time, there was a marked difference in the “edginess” of it as she appeared in certain scenes on a condo-type rooftop with a patch of manicured grass and a built-in network of “ropes” (more in the style of deflated cloths normally used for oversized tents or umbrellas) that Kiesza treats like her own adult jungle gym (being that, after all, Williamsburg is a giant adult jungle gym that occasionally incorporates room for the actual kids of the adults).
And so, the girl who cashed in on the peak of hipster culture circa 2014 by filming her “Hideaway” video in one long take starting at the corner of N. 12th and Kent Avenue (back when there was still no sign of anything on that street, least of all a fucking SoulCycle) has risen from the ashes (complete with her signature fiery red hair that Lucille Ball would surely covet) of that persona as an 80s pop princess. One that gives the likes of Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga (both guilty of succumbing to that sonic trend earlier this year with Future Nostalgia and Chromatica, respectively) a run for their money–though probably not literally since Kiesza will likely never ascend to their same mainstream ranks. With inspiration from La Roux (the 00s OG of homage to the 80s) evident as well (which is perhaps not a coincidence considering the Brit’s own red locks), Kiesza joins the ranks of female musicians who know their 80s shit.
