As the Big Apple’s drag queen du jour, Justin Bond is Kiki, an over-the-hill and under-the-radar cabaret chanteuse who can’t shake her longing for the show biz spotlight that shook her off the stage many moons ago.
Dementedly determined to regain her past glory, she has enlisted Herb (Kenny Mellman), a gay, Jewish piano hack, to accompany her on manic covers of more contemporary songs by the likes of Wu-Tang Clan and Sleater-Kinney.
With their recorded debut, Do You Hear What We Hear? (It’s a trick question: Nobody hears things quite like they hear them, honey), the two deliver the goods that their infamous stage shows have long promised. Spreading yuletide smear with a holiday satire that will sound hilariously relevant year-round, the album blends rock and pop covers with Christmas mock-ups — an entire hour of utterly enjoyable comedy, blasphemy and tragedy. Kiki, oblivious and proud, looks like a coked-out Laurie Metcalf who learned makeup secrets from Tammy Faye Bakker’s little black book of beauty.
In other words, the duo is as gloriously camped up and glammed out as ever. With holiday standards brilliantly merging into faves by Radiohead, Tori Amos and Nirvana, among others, Kiki and Herb’s fucked-up festivities are the perfect antidote to your post-holiday blues and beyond. (www.kikiandherb.com)
E-mail Jimmy Draper at [email protected].
