‘Slash welfare, Who to call, Pregnant and alone, Potemkin village, no, no home, She’s a human dog, Rearing her chainsaw child’ (Lillibilly)

Philadelphia’s Kilynn Lunsford has been involved in experimental DIY punk – most notably, perhaps, in the guise of Taiwan Housing Project – for some twenty years.  She released her first album under her own name, Custodians Of Human Succession, in 2022 and is now back with the captivating follow-up, Promiscuous Genes.

The album’s starting point is rooted in 1980s’ post-punk, an inspiration that is then deftly refashioned in Kilynn’s inimitable style.  She calls upon dissonant dance beats, flaring noise punk, and a rich pop sensibility to hone a sound that is catchily alluring and impetuously unpredictable in equal measure.

The finishing touch is, of course, Kilynn’s own mercurially shapeshifting vocals.  At differing times, she taunts, then comforts, ominously menaces, then consoles.  Shaped by her experiences as a healthcare union organiser, her darkly surreal stream of consciousness unpicks the governing rationality that seeks to excuse and justify, rather than challenge, socio-economic inequality.

Sweeping from the powerfully ‘Slithering on the ground’ repetition of My Amphibian Face to the unsettling trip hop of the title track, and then from the thumping euphoric beats of Gateway To Hell to the eerily compelling Let’s Eat, the only thing you can be sure of is that you won’t guess quite where you’re going next.  But you will almost certainly rather like it.