K’s Choice

SARAH BETTENS: vocals
GERT BETTENS: guitars, vocals
JAN VAN SICHEM, JR.: guitars
ERIC GROSSMAN: bass
BART VAN DER ZEEUW: drums

On their 550 Music album, K’S CHOICE reaffirm their status as one of the most compelling bands on the contemporary music scene. Having already made their presence felt with their haunting Top Five modern rock hit “Not An Addict” from their 1996 PARADISE IN ME album–which dominated the #1 spot for two consecutive weeks on Billboard’s “Heatseekers” chart–K’S CHOICE have joined forces with acclaimed producer Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Counting Crows, The Pixies) for COCOON CRASH.

This album marks the spot where bouyant pop melodies collide with propulsive rock rhythms and vivid, imaginative lyrics, and distinctively somehow manages to be both complex and accessible. It also captures the grace, emotion and fury of the band’s acclaimed live performances.

Working with Gil Norton definitely made an impact in the evolution of K’S CHOICE. As SARAH BETTENS explains, “I don’t think that we’re a different band than we were two months ago, I just think everything sounds so much better than before. And that’s exactly what Gil came in to do. He changed some of the songs around and suggested a million things: some of the things we liked, some of the things we didn’t. It wasn’t about egos and who was right or wrong. We were just trying to get the best thing possible for the songs. I’m so happy we chose him because it turned out amazingly for us.”

“We try to write about life,” GERT BETTENS says of the songs on COCOON CRASH. “In order to translate life into sound, the music has to be extreme in a way. So we have this really heavy element going on with the dark lyrics, but at the same time there’s this lightness to a lot of the songs. That’s what life probably is. It’s light and it’s heavy at the same time.”

The new CD finds K’S CHOICE taking up where their 1996 breakthrough album, PARADISE IN ME, left off. Thanks largely to the success of “Not An Addict,” sibling songwriters GERT and SARAH BETTENS were praised as spokespersons for their generation. The single, which the Chicago Sun Times described as “the most mesmerizing song on radio,” eloquently addressed issues of substance abuse, denial and temptation. It spent nearly 30 weeks on Billboard’s “Modern Rock Tracks” chart (where it peaked at #5), bolstered by opening performances with Alanis Morissette, The Verve Pipe and Tonic, as well as a one-off appearance on 1997’s celebrated Lilith Fair.

Of PARADISE IN ME, Venice magazine noted, “…it’s damn close to inevitable that K’S CHOICE will rise above the pile of one-hit wonders whose ashes litter the floors of alternative radio stations these days,” while Hits elaborated: “Through a set that careens from quiet ballads to powerfully thrown-down monster rockers, SARAH BETTENS’ voice rings like an old silver chime. A smoky veil throws a burnish over the blinding clarity of her tone while sibling GERT provides the perfect buff to make the whole thing glow.”

With COCOON CRASH, K’S CHOICE make good on their tremendous promise. It’s a lovingly crafted study in melody and rhythm, to say nothing of SARAH BETTENS’ expressive vocals and GERT and SARAH’s lyrics which examine a variety of topics, from dementia and alienation, to abandonment, and to the mythic struggle between good and evil.

“In comparison to PARADISE IN ME, there are different themes,” SARAH says. “Some songs are definitely about love, and GERT has written … about losing your innocence and arriving at your next level. The title track is about that–coming to a different world and learning to adapt. So every song is definitely about something.”

More often than not, that “something” SARAH alludes to is relationships. On songs like “In Your Room,” “Believe,” and “Winners,” GERT and SARAH explore traditional friendships and romances, to the existential relationship one can enjoy with one’s self.

Indeed, on “Believe” the band sing of experiencing liberation through self-affirmation. To wit: “Love, what else is real?/A religion that appeals to me/I believe in me.” SARAH says the song details her quest for an absolute truth. “It describes everything I’ve done, looked for, searched for, and thought about in the last two years,” the singer says. “I’m still going back and forth between a lot of things, and believing in myself at this point is probably the only thing I’m really sure of.”

Where “Believe” celebrates self-awareness and individuality, “In Your Room” pays tribute to traditional friendships. Inspired by SARAH’s best friend, the song examines the deep emotions that animate every relationship. Sings SARAH: “As she embraces all of me/I want her only to need me/It doesn’t matter what I tell her/She changes her mind before she speaks/And tends to talk before she thinks/But how I love her.”

“I think friendship may be a recurring theme on the album, probably because it played such an important role in my life,” SARAH says. “Being away from home so much as we’ve been over the last two years, I’ve really missed my friends a lot. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about.”

K’S CHOICE also like to immerse themselves in different worlds, pondering life from a different point-of-view than the one they’re used to. Consider “Everything For Free,” an eerie song with a chilling melody that, says SARAH, portrays the life of a man in a mental institution who enjoys his easy day-to-day activities without the worry of “normal” everyday stress such as traffic, business, shopping and everything else.

The band employ more cryptic forms of expression on “Cocoon Crash,” in which GERT documents an imaginary conversation between himself and God. The guitarist shifts emotional gears on the hard-driving “Hide,” where he explores the darker side of his character, assuming the voice of a “multiplying parasite…bright but blurry.”

Both songs offer fascinating glimpses into GERT’s personality. “I wrote ‘Hide’ when I was in very dark mood,” the guitarist explains. “I had already written ‘Cocoon Crash,’ where I imagined having a conversation with God or Jesus, so I decided to do the opposite on ‘Hide.’ I wanted to let evil have it’s say, to let the devil do the talking. It’s probably good that those two songs are on the same album, to show that there’s both good and bad sides to me.”

While many brother/sister relationships are marred by sibling rivalries, GERT and SARAH have always enjoyed a friendship based on a mutual love of music. The two began performing together in their home city of Antwerp. An amatuer live recording drew the attention of Belgium’s Double T Music, which released the group’s first album under their original name, The Choice (the name was later changed when it was discovered that an American band already held rights to the moniker). “K” is a reference to a character in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, who, as SARAH explains, “had no choice.”

The band officially surfaced on the international music scene with their 1993 debut album, THE GREAT SUBCONSCIOUS CLUB; the U.K. magazine Melody Maker praised the band’s “distinctly irony-heavy glint in their eye.” Subsequent tours opening for Morphine and Indigo Girls only served to intensify the buzz surrounding the band. Their 1995 second album PARADISE IN ME quickly earned platinum status overseas and resulted in a North American tour with Alanis Morrisette, as well as European dates on Germany’s Rockpalast festival, and Roskilde in Denmark.

Fueled by the success of the single, “Not An Addict,” the band’s second album held the #1 spot on Billboard’s “Heatseekers” chart for two consecutive weeks, and also enjoyed a lengthy stay on the magazine’s “Top 200 Albums” chart. Recently, SARAH lent her ethereal background vocals to the score written by George S. Clinton for the film, “Wild Things,” a Hitchcockian thriller starring Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell and Bill Murray that’s set for release in Spring of 1998.

The band recorded COCOON CRASH in between tour breaks. Once the album was complete, K’S CHOICE made a final round of U.S. tour dates in late 1997, including an appearance at a Lilith Fair show in Florida. A highlight of the show came when the band performed a crowd-pleasing version of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World” with the Indigo Girls. K’S CHOICE officially concluded their three-year tour in support of PARADISE IN ME with a packed New Year’s Eve performance at the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles.

With the release of COCOON CRASH, K’S CHOICE will hit the road, further illuminating the songs on the album. And with K’S CHOICE, those songs will be easily translated into a bracing performance that won’t disappoint. As SARAH concludes, “I think we’re a very honest, straightforward band–what you see is what you get and what you see is what we are. I think that’s the vibe people get when they’re watching us onstage. They know we’re having a good time performing for them.”