Kathryn Mohr : Waiting Room

Kathryn Mohr was not put on this earth to make fun, bubbly party albums. The Oakland-based experimental musician keeps her dissonant, Gothic folk music firmly planted in the moss-covered forest floor. A place where the sun never penetrates, leaving the ground forever damp and the air thick with the scent of fungi, wet tree bark, and decomposition.

Kathryn Mohr’s debut, the weird and disquieting Waiting Room, is perfectly comfortable on record label The Flenser. Much like that California-based record label’s roster, Mohr’s music is eerie and despondent. Sparsely filled out with acoustic guitar, keys, Kathryn’s own ghostly distant vocals, and field recordings that were created in Iceland where Mohr recorded the album at a former fish packing plant, now an artist retreat. The isolation of the landscape – along with its never ending days of summer and perpetual nights of winter – come through easily in the aged-sounding songs.

For the most part Waiting Room sounds and feels like someone speaking in their sleep, revealing subconscious thoughts and repressed memories. Through a filter of gauze and transistor radio-quality fidelity, songs like “Diver” and “Rated” buoy in a sea of discontent. The field recordings add a touch of lost in Mother Nature which makes them all the more pained. I can hear bits of PJ Harvey and even Siouxsie Sioux in the naked delivery. If there were drums and bass on a song like “Elevator” I could see it making the rounds on college radio back in the 90s.

There are moments of earworm hookiness, like on the blues-infused “Petrified”, especially in Mohr’s vocal delivery. And “Take It” would have sounded right at home on Hole’s Live Through This. I do hear a lot of young Courtney Love in the distorted guitar attack and wailing vocal delivery.

“Prove It” loses the layer of sonic grime and comes out as a melancholy piano ballad. Part Tori Amos, The Knife, and Bjork, all rolled into an out-of-tune, boozy piano piece. Album closer “Waiting Room” isn’t a Fugazi cover, but its accordian and somber feel is the perfect end to this darkly-lit record.

There’s a lot to digest on Kathryn Mohr’s Waiting Room. It’s not going to fit everyone’s musical appetite, but for those willing to step into the darkness with Mohr these songs will grow. Much like that moss on the forest floor.