Strobe Magazine (September 1996)

Kristen Barry - The Beginning, the Middle, the End

by Steven Gizicki

On the first day, God (or was it the Devil?) created Alanis Morissette, and she went forth to sell gazillions of records and earn an armload of Grammies. On the second day, the major labels unleashed multitude of Alanis carbon copies unto the Earth: Patti Rothberg, Tracy Bonham, etc. On the third day, the buying public collectively retched and hurled all the trash into the compost heap.

But wait - if you blink, you might miss Kristen Barry. It's likely that her debut album will get lost among the crashing waves of talentless knockoffs vying for attention, and that would be a shame. Her work reflects a deeper breadth of women performers like Polly Jean Harvey, Sinead O'Connor and Patti Smith. And, thankfully, there isn't a pandering, wimpy "I wanna radio hit" song in the bunch.

Her debut album takes off where PJ Harvey's Dry left off. Pounding drums, clever guitar riffs, and Barry's authoritative vocals beg for attention, and could give more than a few male rock stars a run for their money. "Created", "Seeing Gun", and the speaker-blowing "Big Girl" kick out with enough force to singe your eyebrows. Even better, Barry maneuvers through it all with such grace and confidence that it doesn't come off like she's trying to prove anything. It just seems so... natural.

Even if Barry does manage to hit radio paydirt (most likely with the folksy "Why Are You Wasting My Time"), at least she didn't have to sell her soul to do it.