Madeline Kenney, “an Oakland-dwelling Seattle transplant” dream pop artist, is now on tour with Wye Oak, promoting her upcoming album, Perfect Shapes.
Kenney has led a life of love of learning. Growing up in Seattle, switching her major in college from dance to interpersonal neurobiology, and later moving to Oakland, California, to pursue a career as a baker led her to find her calling in music. This constant learning and self-reflection could be found in her songs.
Perfect Shapes will be Kenney’s second album, following Night Night At The First Landing, and will offer a commentary on femininity and how it is shaped by culture and society.
“I think the album is a culmination of a lot of things, but a lot of it is about expectations of femininity and social pressures that we put on ourselves or are put on us,” said Kenney.
Although the album offers Kenney’s commentary on these issues, the album is not a political album.
“I think it’s more a cultural or societal commentary on how we are socialized as women, and, you know, sexual objects and mother figures,” Kenney said. “You know, the expectations to have children and to get married, and kind of have that shifting society. But it’s all of that tying into my own personal life and how I’m dealing with all of that stuff.”
Ultimately, the name, Perfect Shapes, was a perfect fit, since, according to Kenney, is a word play on the idea of cultural femininity, that “women are expected to be a certain shape, to be desirable, to be perfect.”
Now, Kenney is out with her friends from Wye Oak promoting the album. Playing in sold-out shows for the Wye Oak audience has been an interesting experience for Kenney.
“It’s super fun playing to a crowd that big,” she said. “There’s really great energy in the room. It kind of fills the room with a sort of commodity; there’s a packed room full of people who are all there to experience the same thing and I think that kind of creates a special energy.”
She will be performing at The Lowbrow Palace in El Paso, Texas, June 24. Below are the dates of her other shows.
Tour Dates
July 20 – Soda Bar, San Diego, CA
July 21 – Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix, AZ
July 23 – Meow Wolf Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
July 24 – The Lowbrow Palace, El Paso, TX
July 27 – Saturn Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
By Aimée Santillán