"I THOUGHT, OH MY GOD, THIS KID LOOKS LIKE GRAHAM PARSONS AND KEITH RICHARDS."
bottoms, fringe, leather, fishnets, thick black eyeliner, and tight Brady Bunch sweaters. A n d there’s that Lady Gaga again. The Mother Monster is a huge influence on Kim—not so much in sound, but in theory. She talks about the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, a concept discussed by Richard Wagner in a series of essays to describe the “complete and total artwork.” It’s a term used to describe Gaga as well. For her, life is art, art is life, and every moment—from cooking a pie in a Chanel suit to mint hair and lipstick at bedtime—is part of the overall oeuvre. Like the notoriously self-confident, brutally ambitious pop-star, Kim also wants full-court domination. She isn’t someone that would be content with a headlining gig at Cannery Ballroom— Bridgestone or Madison Square Garden would do better, thank you very much. Kim thinks that for her vision to succeed, she needs to hit the masses. “I do want to appeal to the mainstream and integrate my art with fashion and film,” she says. “Something like Lady Gaga has done. She is a cultural icon, and I’d like to do that for southern music. Because no one in southern music has done what she has done for pop.” She uses words like “concept career,” and admires the way that Gaga has fostered relationships with couture designers, filmmakers and other artists to create her “haus,” a model that Kim admires. “I want to use the raw materials of the South the way Lady Gaga has used the raw materials of the future to convey her influences,” she says. “Fur, denim, leather, stone, wood, feathers, suede, anything that’s natural or often deemed masculine, to convey western wear, to convey history, to convey America—to convey the fact that jazz, blues, gospel, soul, and rock ‘n’ roll were in so many ways birthed here.” The macabre is also a crucial ele-
//////// 67