Fluxblog Weekly #218: Sir Babygirl, Kate Bollinger, Crumb, Hatchie, Gena Rose Bruce
July 1st, 2019
Handcuff Our Friendship
Sir Babygirl “Cheerleader”
“Cheerleader” is a very charged word, one that evokes a lot of overlapping anxieties about status, conformity, femininity, commodification of teen girls, and how Hollywood has packaged teen archetypes for generations. Kelsie Hogue gleefully dives into all of that in this bombastic and melodramatic pop song, but adds a few extra layers of angst by centering it on latent homoerotic desire and a fraught frenemy relationship between two girls. Hogue sings the song with a touch of irony – you’re certainly meant to hear it in the context of previous iterations of teen pop culture artifacts, and she’s aware of the heightened emotion of the characters. But even still, the level of commitment in the lyrics and vocal performance make it clear that this is coming from a very raw emotional place that’s only just getting filtered through glossiness, camp, and archetypes.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 2nd, 2019
So Much To Be Afraid Of
Kate Bollinger “I Don’t Wanna Lose”
“I Don’t Wanna Lose” has a light, easy-going feel to it, but under the seeming tranquility of the music is a tangle of confusion, fear, and insecurity. Kate Bollinger confronts all of this with modesty and self-deprecating wit – “so what if it’s all my decisions / or my indecision / oh, I just can’t pick one” – but doesn’t deny herself the weight of her emotions. Given the tone of her words and the graceful and relaxed tone of her arrangement, the anxiety at the heart of the song is placed in a greater context. There, but ultimately at scale with the rest of her life, and what’s around her. It’s like a coping mechanism set to music, like she’s carefully guiding herself through a maze of emotion to get to the desired point: “I just wanna win.”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
July 2nd, 2019
The Radio Reminds Me I’m Alive
Crumb “Ghostride”
“Ghostride” is a slow, gentle, hazy song about living in a daze. Lila Ramani sings about feeling stuck “on automatic” and being reminded she’s alive by mundane stimulation in the back of a car. She’s passively going along with moving from place to place, but her mind is either somewhere else or entirely turned off, depending on the moment. There’s a bit of sadness and introspection, but it’s mostly just a pleasant sort of disassociation. The sound of the song is psychedelic, but without a lot the usual atmospheric signifiers of that vibe – it’s like the ambience has been cut out entirely in favor of a dry, clean, uncanny recording aesthetic.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
July 3rd, 2019
This Party’s A Drag
Hatchie “Unwanted Guest”
Hatchie is an artist whose music always sounds so familiar that it can feel like she’s deliberately trying to give the listener a “deja vu” sensation. Is she lifting a melody and texture from a specific old shoegaze or goth song from the late 80s/early 90s, or is it just generally sorta that vibe? My knowledge isn’t deep enough to go full “trainspotter” on her, but I do appreciate her attention to detail and dynamics. “Unwanted Guest” is her best song to date, and not coincidentally, it’s also her most dramatic. There’s a very Cure sort of bombast to this one – the suggestion of vast scale and enormous noise, but glossy and refined in its tonality. Her voice reminds me a lot of Siouxsie her, mostly in timbre but also in her confidence and authority in how she sings the verses. The most musically exciting bit of the song reminds me a little of Siouxsie too – the ascending melodic hook “put me on your list of hearts to haunt” somewhat echoes the similarly glorious “nothing or no one will ever make me let you down” refrain of “Kiss Them for Me.”
Buy it from Amazon.
July 4th, 2019
Irrelevant To You
Gena Rose Bruce “Angel Face”
“Angel Face” is a song about unrequited love, but it’s sung from the perspective of someone who has clearly moved on from being heartbroken about it to a state of bitter acceptance. It’s not an angry song but there’s certainly some resentment in Gena Rose Bruce’s voice as she sings about the object of her desire feeling like “God’s gift to the world,” and while they could be just as arrogant and egotistical as she’s making them out to be, it might just be a matter of her taking them off a pedestal she put them on while she was caught up in infatuation. The composition of the track is brilliant in the way it gradually builds from just a mildly nervous pulse and her fragile, lovely voice up to a sort of muted rock catharsis at the end. In that final sequence she repeats a very familiar line from pop history – “I can’t make you love me” – and her phrasing strips out the usual pathos and replaces it with a cold resolve, like she’s finally just killing the feeling forever.
Buy it from Bandcamp.