The Kitchen Presents Kristin Anna: I MUST BE THE DEVIL With Ragnar Kjartansson

The Kitchen presents a special live performance celebrating the launch of vocalist and composer Kristín Anna's recent album I Must Be The Devil, with an opening set of songs and poems by Ragnar Kjartansson to jubilate the event (June 2). A founding member of influential Icelandic post-rock band múm, Kristín Anna has collaborated with the likes of The National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner, Animal Collective and Kjartansson, whose Bel-Air Glamour label co-released her album with The Vinyl Factory. I Must Be the Devil features a cycle of songs written over the course of 12 years, which Kristín Anna describes as "a very personal affair" undertaken for "emotional and spiritual survival."The songs were recorded with Kjartan Sveinsson (formerly of Sigur Rós) over couple years where Kristín Anna would both dig up old and nearly forgotten compositions and write new ones. From a bulk of songs the pair arranged and finalized in the studio, the album was formed. For this performance, Kristín Anna (on voice and piano) is joined by her twin sister Gyða (on cello).

Kristín Anna has consistently written songs since leaving múm in 2006, but seldom released her own material-rather performing them live, sharing her work with friends. After a decade, Kjartansson and his wife, singer Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir-two of Kristín Anna's closest friends-urged her to record and release them. As she tells the Reykjavík Grapevine, "The material is all super personal and fragile to me...[and] it is just more natural for me to perform. Give me a time and space and I don't need to know anything. I'll use my body or my voice or machines. I find performing and performance is safe, but when I make tangible stuff I tend to kind of freak out...It is really a gift [my friends] gave to me, to have made me do this." This performance, in collaboration with her sister and friend, manifests the intimacy, vulnerability, and camaraderie through which this album came to fruition.

Ragnar Kjartansson adds, "Kristín Anna is an artist like no other. Kristín roams the earth weaving a thread of her life, her loves, her dreams into this confessional gem of an album. The music is a reflection of life lived away from the norms, banging old pianos and celebrating a conflicted lust for life. This is a big record full of deep truths, suffering, irony and beauty. Unique songs by a unique artist. Yes this is real, this is good old mysterious talent. The record was produced and financed by her friends in the music and visual art scene. She is an artist's artist."

Kristín Anna: I Must Be the Devil will take place Sunday, June 2 at 8pm at The Kitchen, 512 W 19th St, New York. Tickets ($20 General / $15 Members) are available online at thekitchen.org; by phone at 212.255.5793 x11; and in person at The Kitchen, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2:00-6:00pm.