Texas-born composer and performance artist Konrad Kinard returns with his most personal work yet, War Is Family, a 20-track experimental memoir released through Incinerate Media and The Orchard. Calling it “a radio drama without the drama or the radio,” Kinard dives straight into the psychological fallout of the Cold War childhood he grew up inside. This is a haunting excavation of a nation raised under sirens, secrets, and the myth of American righteousness. Produced by Fredrik Kinbom in Berlin with contributions from BJ Cole (pedal steel), cellists Eleonora Rosca, Emily Burridge, Matthias Hejlik, drummer Chris Farr, and Kinard’s own family, the album merges sound collage, storytelling, and scorched-earth emotion.
It all begins with “Born A Texan,” where calm spoken narration sits over soft beeps, distant water drips, and cricket ambience, like memory is trying to speak through static. Kinard recounts Sputnik circling overhead, his father listening in terror, “the Russians were at our door.” Then, without missing a beat, “Siddhartha Goes To Alabama” drifts in on brooding plucked guitar, his gravel-rich storytelling dropping the listener into the back seat of a ‘68 Oldsmobile heading through the Deep South. Reality and nightmare blur, with cotton fields, Confederate ghosts, and a boy learning the difference between the America on TV and the one sweating outside the window.
Mid-album, the title track “War Is Family” arrives like an epiphany, with piano ringing dark and heavy, deep strings writhing, Kinard singing with a voice that sounds like years of held-back tears. The refrain, “War is family,” sounds so Orwellian, you wish you didn’t know or learn it.
Later, “Love Orgy Hot” twists innocence into dread, with dirty guitars churn, a child recites the historic puritan bedtime prayer used back during the World Wars, and suddenly the quiet becomes apocalyptic. By the time “A Texas Summer Night” closes the record, you feel like you’ve lived someone else’s memories, and maybe uncovered your own.
Raw, unnerving, and absolutely gripping, War Is Family is the apparition that returns to remind us what fear taught a generation, and what we still haven’t outgrown.
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Review by: Naomi Joan