Kendra Morris "I Am What I'm Waiting For" CD

Anachronistic Kendra Morris's anachronistic and eternally cool new album, I Am What I'm Waiting For! Combining raw, powerful vocals with arrangements that betray her extensive record collection and wayward instincts for joyous noise, the album is vibrant, colorful and full of personality!

■Kendra Morris, a singer-songwriter from Florida who has been described as a post-Amy Winehouse type and a modern-day Janis Joplin, is releasing her new album following her previous album, Nine Lives, on Karma Chief, a subsidiary of Coalmine, the most notable soul/funk label of the moment.

■Co-produced by Torbit Schwartz (AKA Little Shalimar) of Run the Jewels, the album playfully remixes all manner of rock & roll elements—the sass and class of Ronnie Spector, the acid sensibility of the garage-psych compilation Nuggets, the post-modern reworking of mid-century exotica, and the crackled snares and saccharine urbanity of ESG—while also appropriately offering up moments of vulnerable insight from a life spent pursuing creativity.

■ The bell-ringing "Dominoes" pits the mundane conflicts of domesticity and community life against the Ronettes' signature vocals, while the exotica-inflected "All Your Jokes" examines what Morris calls "the need for vulnerability in relationships when you have something to lose." There's also the smoky, doo-wop-inflected "Birthday Song," a brave attempt to stretch the birthday song canon. The almost title track, "What Are You Waiting For," encapsulates the spirit of the album. Over guitar strums that give way to sirens and bongo breakdowns, Morris pleads for reality and self-reliance. I Am What I'm Waiting For is bold in the little details. It's the rare record that doubles as a self-portrait, raw and thrilling in its imperfections.

■Track list