Album Review – Karen Jonas – “The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch”

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photo: Ryan Poe


#514 and #578 (Rockabilly and Country Kitsch) on the Country DDS.

This summer has seen a parade of releases that many people believe will define the very best of country and roots music in 2024. Sturgill Simpson returned with Passage Du Desir. The fast-rising Red Clay Strays released the monumental Made By These Moments. We also had American Aquarium’s The Fear of Standing Still and 49 Winchester’s Leavin’ This Holler, and other albums that are finding strong favor among listeners.

Though Fredericksburg, Virginia’s Karen Jonas is not nearly as well-known as these names, her new album The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch very much deserves to be considered right along with these landmark releases, or any others that anyone may forward as the best of 2024 so far, or even the best in recent memory.

Every musician who fancies themselves as not just an entertainer, but an artist, they labor each time they release an album to offer something that will make a difference in people’s lives through raising awareness in something, championing a certain cause, or changing the way we perceive the world.

Similarly, there are many attempts to conceptualize albums, or at least present them with some sort of cohesive theme that can immerse the listener in an experience and make them more open to whatever message or lesson is being offered. But often these efforts fall short of the intended goal. They’re too obtuse, or maybe too direct and preachy to be effective. The effort and intent isn’t what’s most important. It’s the execution, and the effectiveness.

Simply the title of The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch feels ambitious. But not even this prepares you for what you’ll experience if you approach this album with an open mind, and as a linear work. Karen Jonas has released an exemplar take on the American concept record.

The album begins like a travelogue in both time and geography to highlight the hallmarks of American kitsch culture: Las Vegas and Hawaii, leather jackets and electric guitars, the Cadillac car, Elvis Presley, and plastic pink flamingos. This iconography is evoked in sometimes simple, but always entertaining songs that utilize ’50s and ’60s musical accompaniment at times akin to country like in the Carter Family-inspired song “Rich Man’s Valley,” but more often rendered in rockabilly and vintage Americana like the rollicking “Four Cadillacs.”

At the beginning you sense that Karen Jonas is simply using these kitschy subjects as a way to showcase her adeptness with multiple musical styles while highlighting the contours of kitsch culture. In this pursuit alone, Jonas and her collaborators are quite successful. This includes the contributions of Karen’s long-time guitar player Tim Bray who adds ample moments of tasty instrumentation. Some of the songs also specifically follow the life of Elvis Presley like “Shake Bump and Grind Show” and “Mama’s Gone” since in many respects Elvis was the King of American Kitsch.


But this is all just the aperitif to calibrate your attention on how American culture utilizes consumerism and entertainment as diversions from infinite boredom and a deep-seated sadness. Pink flamingos, white picket fences, and getaway spots are part of a grand facade that hides how we’re all perched precariously on the edge of madness or sorrow, and can teeter over the brink at any point in time. All the endless consumption by people trying to stay distracted from the stark reality of their lives also carries the unenviable fate of being wholly unsustainable.

You start to sense this album is something more than simply a kitschy good time with the mood of the protagonist in “Plastic Pink Flamingos” turns from enthusiastic to obsessive over her yard art. This leads into the commentary on the greatest avenue for American escapism: pharmaceuticals. “Call Dr. Nick” speaks to the over-medicating of America with “cotton candy pills,” and how this practice side steps the addressing of our underlying issues for a convenient distraction from them.

Perhaps Karen’s most cunning moment in the preamble portion of the album is the song “Online Shopping.” Her whimsical, aloof, pink and plaid presentation is the perfect illustration of actual life in America, and an excellent precursor to the album’s most important moment. The title track “American Kitsch” is a poem, not a song, and is like the Rosetta Stone of the album, unveiling the genius of how it all unfolds as social commentary leading to stark self-realization. It’s the “fall” of American kitsch after the rise from the rest of the album.

It happens to be that even without this revelatory action that fulfills the lofty expecation of the album’s title, The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch includes a lot of killer music. Each track is exquisitely crafted and performed, with lots of diversity and spice among the various songs. But ultimately, this album is about so much more than musical entertainment.

Saving Country Music has been singing the praises of Karen Jonas since 2014, though some of her recent efforts went a little too far afield for a country outlet to follow. Sometimes Karen’s singing style has also been a little too expressive—even though this is one of her strengths—though Jonas seems to find the perfect balance here.

The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch is one of those career-defining albums where it all comes together, where the songs equal something greater than the sum of their parts, where an idea is expressed that we all know to be true but need a dedicated reminder of, and an artist says what we all wish we could say, but fail to find the words for, or are too afraid to admit.

It’s really difficult to find fault with anything here, while it’s how The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch points out many of our American faults and foibles that makes it such a deeply important work worth regarding intently.

9.7/10

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