Jena Kraus

____________________________________________________________ __________-REVIEW of "BOTH DADS R DEAD DOGS"-She puts on a little girl voice and then double-tracks herself as another little girl, the two girls shadowing each other, going from baby talk to sharp screams. Blazing fury made from scraps and castoffs, feedback and fuzz. Jena holds her dad responsible for the death of her first dog, her stepdad responsible for the death of her second. She promises vengeance - karmic vengeance, cosmic vengeance. A special message just for her stepdad: "When you reverse dog, what does it spell? She's gonna get you, you're gonna rot in hell."Something else that's really interesting about this song is its structure. It starts as a disturbing lullaby to Jena Kraus' second dog, Cocoa Bean. "I remember she used to smile as I rubbed her tummy/ ...She could never be mean like him/ ...She'll hold my secrets/ She will never tell." So the dead dog becomes a literal site of confession before the shouted chorus comes in, with no prior biographical context (to be explained in the next verse), "BOTH DADS ARE! DEAD DOGS!" Then there's some more straightforward linkage of the dads to the dogs, and then the quiet breakdown with the step-dad line -- which sounds even better than it reads because Jena has somehow made it funny. The situation is sick but so is her delivery; it's self-conscious without compromising the tragic undercurrent, about equally absurd and profound. Now I'm hung up trying to list everything that these dogs symbolize...her childhood, her trauma, both dads and their failures (as dads, as men), and the wrath of God, to name a few ("she's gonna get you"...I imagine her step-dad being attacked by Cerberus, two heads for each dog and the third for Jena with a twisted little smile on her face). -Frank Kogan (PaperThinWalls.com)________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ________________________________________Blind Melon "Mouthful of Cavities"