Kristeen Young returns to the Band on the Wall bar stage.
Kristeen Young has always been a DIY artist in the most classic sense: standing alone, outside, and in between categories. She plays piano in a sort of bashing/dissonant manner (but melodic at times) and sings using a wide range (of notes and emotion) that veers into operatic territory. But, the music is best described as no genre or multi-genre and she has done this for 9 albums.
Like her 2019 album, The SubSet, Kristeen wrote, arranged and produced her newest album, The Beauty Shop (released June 24, 2022). The album is a song cycle: musical snapshots of the life of a serial killer, with each song inspired by a major emotion (ie. one song based on rage, one on grief, one terror etc.) But, really, the album is about how life kills our emotions. It’s also inspired by the walled-in carport room in the little house where her foster/adopted mom cut, set, and permed hair in St. Louis, MO. USA where Kristeen spent her childhood. The Beauty Shop is also about United Statesian American culture where all that matters is how things look, how people see you.
Besides the music itself, Kristeen has shot and edited 5 music videos (herself) as visual companions for the songs. She also designed and made the wardrobe and props.
Although a lifelong unsigned, manager-less, un-agent-ed artist, she has found support among some of the most undeniable artists of our time: David Bowie recorded a (Kristeen-written, self-released) duet with her. Kristeen toured, as opener, for several world-wide Morrissey tours (as well as singing on his #1 song, That’s How People Grow Up, and sang on Late Night with David Letterman with him. Dave Grohl played drums on her whole self-released 2014 album and then performed with her on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) played guitar on her self-released 2017 album. In 2020, she received her first New York Times review (an enthusiastic write-up by legendary music critic, Jon Pareles) of a re-working of the Bowie duet.
Her first post-pandemic show was at Riot Fest in Chicago in September 2021. Then in March 2022 SxSW gave her her own curated night. Since then she has been playing enthusiastically attended shows in her now hometown of New York City.