Month: December 2021

AF 2021 IN REVIEW: Our Favorite Albums & Singles of The Year

If you went into 2021 with high expectations, you weren’t alone. Even if it was hard to feel optimistic this time last year, it certainly seemed as if things could get no worse. Live music did return, after all – though with the appearance of Delta, and now Omicron, the joyful noise comes with a caveat. After sixteen months of having to livestream shows (fun, but not the same) little could stop me from attending shows in person; wearing a mask as an extra precaution felt like no big deal, even if no one else was doing it. But luck (and vaccines) feel like the real reason I emerged unscathed from dozens of risky experiences, and with performances on the horizon canceled once again, maybe it’s wise to enter 2022 with slightly lower expectations.

There’s always recorded music, anyhow. Maybe the tumult of the year just has me personally feeling a bit unfocused, but it seems as though I barely scaled the mountain of this year’s musical offerings without getting a bit buried in the avalanche of releases – ones that had been pushed back, ones that were created in lockdown. I’ll be playing catch up well into the new year, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t gems I connected with almost immediately, and very deeply. And that’s what I’ve heard across the board, from those in the industry as well as casual music fans – is that our favorites this year stayed on heavy rotation, as we latched onto music that accurately reflected our moods, which evolved moment to moment and of course happened to be different for all of us at any given time. What does that mean for year-end lists? Audiofemme has always compiled an eclectic list, including favorites from each of our contributors without overall rank – consider any repeats to be the best of the best. But this year, the list seems even more diverse, meaning there’s a wealth of weird and wonderful music below to discover, dear reader. Thanks for sticking with us through another wild year.

EDITOR LISTS

  • Marianne White (Executive Director)
    • Top 10 Albums:
      1) PinkPantheress – to hell with it
      2) Mdou Moctar – Afrique Victime
      3) Low – Hey What
      4) Jazmine Sullivan – Heaux Tales
      5) Julien Baker – Little Oblivions
      6) Dawn Richard – Second Line: An Electro Revival
      7) Indigo De Souza – Any Shape You Take
      8) aya – im hole
      9) Flock of Dimes – Head of Roses
      10) Tyler, the Creator – CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
    • Top 5 Singles:
      1) Japanese Breakfast – “Be Sweet”
      2) Loraine James (feat. Eden Samara) – “Running Like That”
      3) Hand Habits – “More Than Love”
      4) Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen – “Like I Used To”
      5) Julien Baker – “Faith Healer (Half Waif Remix)”

  • Lindsey Rhoades (Editor-in-Chief)
    • Top 10 Albums:
      1) Low – Hey What
      2) Tirzah – Colourgrade
      3) Nana Yamato – Before Sunrise
      4) Emma Ruth Rundle – Engine of Hell
      5) Jane Weaver – Flock
      6) Tonstartssbandht – Petunia
      7) Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
      8) Squirrel Flower – Planet (i)
      9) Veik – Surrounding Structures
      10) Cassandra Jenkins – An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
    • Top 10 Singles:
      1) Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen – “Like I Used To”
      2) Special Interest – “All Tomorrow’s Carry”
      3) Squid – “G.S.K.”
      4) Julien Baker – “Bloodshot”
      5) Mandy, Indiana – “Bottle Episode”
      6) Remember Sports – “Pinky Ring”
      7) Cedric Noel – “Comuu”
      8) Gustaf – “Mine”
      9) June Jones – “Therapy”
      10) MAN ON MAN – “Stohner”

  • Mandy Brownholtz (Marketing Director)
    • Top 5 Albums (in no particular order):
      Spellling – The Turning Wheel
      King Woman – Celestial Blues
      Macy Rodman – Unbelievable Animals
      Marissa Nadler – The Path of the Clouds
      Kinlaw – The Tipping Scale
    • Top 3 Singles (in no particular order):
      Often – “Deep Sleep”
      Mannequin Pussy – “Control”
      Spice – “A Better Treatment”

STAFF LISTS

  • Alexa Peters (Playing Seattle)
    • Top 10 Albums:
      1) Wye Oak – Cut All The Wires: 2009-2011
      2) Dori Freeman – Ten Thousand Roses
      3) Isaiah Rashad – The House Is Burning
      4) Fawn Wood – Kåkike
      5) Carmen Q. Rothwell – Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere
    • Honorable Mention: Mike Gebhart – Co-Pilot 
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Doja Cat (feat. SZA) – “Kiss Me More”
      2) Mitski – “Working for the Knife”
      3) DoNormaal – “Baby May”

  • Cat Woods (Playing Melbourne)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Deap Vally – Marriage
      2) Mod Con – Modern Condition
      3) Laura Stevenson – Laura Stevenson
      4) Joan As Police Woman – The Solution is Restless
      5) Black Country, New Road – For the first time
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Black Country, New Road – “Sunglasses”
      2) Lana Del Rey – “Dealer”
      3) jennylee – “Tickles”

  • Liz Ohanesian (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Hackedepicciotto — The Silver Threshold
      2) Saint Etienne — I’ve Been Trying to Tell You
      3) L’impératrice — Take Tsubo
      4) Pearl and the Oysters— Flowerland
      5) Nuovo Testamento — New Earth
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Midnight Magic – “Beam Me Up” 
      2) Jessie Ware – “Please”
      3) Gabriels – “Love and Hate in a Different Time (Kerri Chandler Remix)”  

  • Gillian G. Gaar (Musique Boutique)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Dolphin Midwives — Body of Water
      2) Sarah McQuaid — The St. Buryan Sessions
      3) Low — Hey What 
      4) Witch Camp — I’ve Forgotten Now Who I Used to Be 
      5) Full Bush — Movie Night
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Maggie Herron — “Sweet Lullaby”
      2) Sleater-Kinney — “High in the Grass”
      3) ONETWOTHREE — “Give Paw” 

  • Jason Scott (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Jetty Bones – Push Back
      2) M.A.G.S. – Say Things That Matter
      3) Lyndsay Ellyn – Queen of Nothing
      4) Kacey Musgraves – star-crossed
      5) Christian Lopez – The Other Side
    • Top 5 Singles:
      1) Hayes Carll – “Help Me Remember”
      2) Jake Wesley Rogers – “Middle of Love”
      3) Adele – “To Be Loved”
      4) Carly Pearce – “What He Didn’t Do”
      5) Kacey Musgraves – “what doesn’t kill me”

  • Michelle Rose (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Alex Orange Drink – Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O​.​K.
      2) Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever
      3) Kacey Musgraves – star-crossed
      4) Magdalena Bay – Mercurial World
      5) Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Blonder – “Ice Cream Girl” 
      2) Mitski – “The Only Heartbreaker”
      3) Kristiane – “Better On Your Own”  

  • Victoria Moorwood (Playing Cincy)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Polo G – Hall of Fame
      2) Benny the Butcher & Harry Fraud – The Plugs I Met 2
      3) Megan Thee Stallion – Something For Thee Hotties
      4) Pooh Shiesty – Shiesty Sessions
      5) blackbear – misery lake
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Benny the Butcher & Harry Fraud – “Thanksgiving”
      2) Lil Nas X (feat. Jack Harlow)  – “INDUSTRY BABY”
      3) 24kGoldn (feat. Future) – “Company”

  • Jamila Aboushaca (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Kacey Musgraves – star-crossed
      2) Snoh Aalegra – Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies 
      3) Lil Nas X – Montero
      4) Darkside – Spiral
      5) Blu DeTiger – How Did We Get Here EP
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Kaytranada (feat. H.E.R.) – “Intimidated”
      2) Kacey Musgraves – “simple times”
      3) Snoh Aalegra – “In Your Eyes”

  • Sophia Vaccaro (Playing the Bay)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Aly & AJ – A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun
      2) Julia Wolf – Girls in Purgatory (Full Moon Edition)
      3) Megan Thee Stallion – Something For Thee Hotties
      4) Lil Mariko – Lil Mariko
      5) Destroy Boys – Open Mouth, Open Heart
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) daine – “dainecore”
      2) Julia Wolf – “Villain”
      3) Doja Cat – “Need To Know”

  • Sam Weisenthal (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Indigo De Souza – Any Shape You Take
      2) Katy Kirby – Cool Dry Place
      3) Mega Bog – Life, and Another
      4) Ada Lea – one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden
      5) Olivia Kaplan – Tonight Turns to Nothing
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Charlotte Cornfield – “Drunk For You” 
      2) Dora Jar – “Multiply”
      3) Joe Taylor Sutkowski, Dirt Buyer – “What Luck, Goodbye”  

  • Sara Barron (Playing Detroit)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) PinkPantheress – to hell with it
      2) Summer Walker – Still Over It
      3) Erika de Casier – Sensational
      4) Jazmine Sullivan – Heaux Tales
      5) Adele – 30
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Lana Del Rey – “Dealer”
      2) Liv.e – “Bout It”
      3) SZA – “I Hate U”

  • Eleanor Forrest (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
      2) CL – ALPHA
      3) My Life As Ali Thomas – Peppermint Town
      4) Halsey – If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power
      5) Remember Sports – Like a Stone
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) FKA twigs (feat. Central Cee) – “Measure of a Man”
      2) Sabriel – “Pulse”
      3) Lexie Liu – “有吗炒面 ALGTR”

How Jetty Bones’ ‘Push Back’ Saved My Life In 2021

Photo Credit: Lindsey Byrnes

Trigger Warning: This editorial contains graphic discussions about suicide and mental health

Jetty Bones pushes the literal boundaries of her work on latest album Push Back, swapping out indie/rock singer/songwriter sensibilities for dazzling dance-centered pop music. Beneath those shimmering, warm, and inviting musical layers, Jetty Bones (real name Kelc Galluzzo) lays her heart and soul bare with regard to her own ongoing journey with depression and suicide. The singer-songwriter has been pretty honest about her experiences online, but these eleven songs showcase, with a scalpel’s merciless edge, a slow mental unraveling and eventual blow-out. It’s one I know all too well.

On “Dolly,” Jetty Bones sings, “Oh, I often want to off myself, but I don’t quite wanna die,” a prickly feeling that’s lingered in my brain since suicidal ideation first slipped around my throat in the summer of 2003. Nothing in particular triggered suffocating thoughts of death; they were just there. One night, I gobbled a whole bottle of Tylenol, and the only thing I achieved was a belly full of black bile. I puked for 24 hours straight and told my mom it was nothing but a stomach bug.

That was the first of many suicide attempts in my life. I’ve danced through various stages of darkness ever since, often slithering through existence like a slug on the sidewalk. In my senior year of college, I landed in the hospital and spent a few days in a psych ward 一 and a year later, I came this close to shuffling off this mortal coil. What I remember most about that dreary February night is stumbling blindly down my block in a panic, the Tylenol flooding my brain and clogging my senses; my vision grew blurry, and my head swam, seemingly crashing against reality like waves on a rock-laced coastline. Remorse bubbled up on my skin like pus-filled blisters, as what I’d attempted to do came into focus with the dissipation of the pills sloshing in my belly. I plopped myself down on the curb and grabbed my stomach.

The night ran cool, even the heat from the pavement was dulling into a simmer. The street lamps cast an intoxicating amber in pools around my feet, as my neck fell into a loose, ribbon-y arc. My gaze fell into the crevices underneath the rubber soles of my converse. I didn’t think I had anything left to give, but somehow, I found my body seemingly moments later tumbling headfirst into my futon. My head spiraled for the next 18 hours or so, the daze never fully wearing off until a week later. I’d never been more terrified to die than I was in those moments.

Twelve years later, it feels both like it happened just yesterday and in another lifetime. I never tried to kill myself again after that, yet I still struggle daily with wanting to kill myself but not quite wanting to die. When I assess 2021, I return to Push Back as the only one record that seems to capture the tragedy I feel forced to play and the beauty in rediscovering what it means to be fully alive and breathing.

With the record’s opening lyric, decorated inside a guitar-synth patchwork in “Waking Up Crying,” Galluzzo asks a simple question: “Can we talk about your heart please?” She goes on to sympathize with the listener, expressing how “damn exhausting” it must be to move through the world and feel like such a burden to everyone. Later, “Waking Up Exhausted” picks up the wayward shards and glues them back together. But her determination to be okay again is all for naught; some days, she doesn’t even have the energy to tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen for coffee. “I think I might be sick,” she mumbles.

Galluzzo positions Push Back as a hyper-electric, wholly-personal case study in mental health, but moments like “Nothing” and “That’s All” oscillate away from themes of anxiety and depression to examine love and heartbreak, too. Even so, there are lyrics in both these songs, for example, that read as subtle cues to her cracking headspace. “I don’t know if you want me to run/Or if I should be fight-fight-fighting for my life,” she renders in the former. In the latter, she spits over a slinky beat, “I don’t wanna be another let down on that list for you/Do it like you gotta do when times are tough/And it’s killing me, you’re feeling like you’re not enough.”

That’s the thing about mental health. It’s insidious and affects your relationships and friends whether you realize it or not. Most often, you don’t know it’s happening until those tenuous ties fray and shred and fall away from your life completely. Then, you come crashing into a song like “Taking Up Space,” in which Galluzzo supposes she should “get out of the way” to save those around her. “The pulling threads of woes we weave are/ Tangled up intricately/With the passive placement of feelings/That leaves us with no room to breathe,” she reflects in the bridge.

“No room to breathe” stings my ears even now. There is no room to breathe when you’re depressed and anxious. The world feels suffocating and much smaller than it really is. So, you turn to any manner of vices – wine perhaps, or you pick up smoking again – and you gaze out over the “Ravine,” as imagined by Galluzzo in one of the album’s most moving moments. “And shameful as it is to admit/I’m in an existential crisis/But I’ll be fine, just like I always am,” she sings, gazing up off the bathroom floor. The dread and anxiety and depression has clashed inside her brain and thrashes until everything collapses into dust, the world distorts, and you have no other way to go but further down. You spiral into an alcohol-induced stupor, and your life doesn’t seem like your life anymore.

As evidenced with “Bad Time,” a collaboration with Eric Egan, one’s coping mechanism can be sardonic humor. Galluzzo diffuses her existential crisis with 100-second reprieve, dishing up cheekiness (“There’s a demon in my heart, and I named her Linda”) while supplying some sage wisdom. “Sorry you caught me at a bad time/See, I thought tonight I might be dying/Nobody told me you could get up and just try again,” she caterwauls. “I’m not trying to be anxious/But I wish for once you would believe that/I’m not afraid of you, honey/I’m just afraid of everything.”

Galluzzo briskly swerves back into brightly package-wrapped seriousness with “Dolly,” another moment that pricks your skin with syrupy deception. Its country framework is jolly, a Friday night hoedown at the local dance hall, distracting you from the lyrics that hint at inner turmoil that’s now bloomed into an inextinguishable wildfire. “I’ve been drowning in the depths, so far gone and so dark/That nobody can save me,” she laments, later admitting that she’s “better off dead or living on the lam.”

There’s one stanza that sums up many things for me:

“I don’t mean to sound impatient
Or hollow and insincere
But I’ve got postcards in my kitchen saying, ‘l wish you were here’
I’m stubborn and ungrateful with the people in my life
Oh, I often want to off myself, but I don’t quite wanna die”

That brings things full circle. “Oh, I often want to off myself, but I don’t quite wanna die” reads as much as a eulogy as it does a dare to live again. This past year, I’ve felt this lyric more than any other. It’s hard to drag yourself out of bed when the pressures of not only the modern world but your own mind press down upon your shoulder blades. The days I spent wallowing in bed and postponing deadlines just so I could breathe again feel like too many to count.

With its haunting vocal structure and palpitating guitar line, operating almost heart-like, “Bug Life” bowls right over you and challenges what I even thought about dying. It’s the finale to end all other finales. “You were a wreck, and they wouldn’t let you in/‘Cause you were a dirty mess/And they don’t want it on their carpet,” she describes the mental tug-of-war. “So you felt like a bug, that everyone wanted to squish/But you wouldn’t give this up/No, you won’t give this up.”

But she did almost give it up. In exchange for a traditional bridge, Galluzzo supplies real voicemails loved ones left her, as well as one she herself left. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” she can be heard, her voice cracking with emotion. In four minutes, “Bug Life” manages to encompass one’s entire existence and the burning out, when you reach the threshold and see yourself never turning back. I came close to never turning back, but I did. And she did. And for that I’m forever thankful.

Earlier this year, I had the joy to speak with Galluzzo about the record’s inception and how putting “Bug Life,” specifically, out into the world is not “an act of bravery or me trying to be inspirational by any means,” she said. “It’s me wanting to show people where I am actually coming from—to help eliminate the idea that I have it all figured out. I’m still human and dealing with this. Depression and suicidal thoughts are part of the mental health issues that I’ll probably deal with for the rest of my life. I shouldn’t be on a pedestal for my recovery.”

And she’s absolutely right. It’s not an act of bravery to share her story; it’s just a piece to the puzzle of who she is. I’ve chosen to be transparent in my journey, as well, with the hope that a queer kid in middle America can see and know they are not alone in their feelings. As cliché as it sounds, things really do get better. Jetty Bones’ Push Back is testament to that.

Despite how bad things can get, and they were awful this year, I am so glad I stayed.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Follow Jetty Bones on Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.

MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Spell Songs, Full Bush, Eva Gardner, Mary Wilson and a Bonus Book

Welcome to Audiofemme’s monthly record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. Every fourth Monday, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

Spell Songs II: Let the Light In (Quercus Records), the second album by the Spell Songs ensemble, is a magical release. The performers first came together to create a musical accompaniment to the book The Lost Words, written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris; the new album is inspired by their subsequent book, The Lost Spells. The books celebrate the wonder of nature, and the performers are drawn from the cream of the British-based folk scene.

In “Bramble,” Karine Polwart’s cool, precise vocal depicts a city slowly becoming engulfed by “thorn arches;” in “Moth,” her recitation of moth names becomes a kind of poetry (she describes the lyric as “a moth mantra for banishing fear, and conjuring delight”). The light-hearted harmonies on “Daisy” take you back to childhood days of making flower chains. The haunting “St. Kilda Wren,” sung by Julie Fowlis in the original Gaelic, is a poignant yearning for the return of the bird to the Scottish archipelago. The song titles reveal the simplicity of the subjects: “Barn Owl,” “Silver Birch,” “Oak.” The performers (also including musicians Kris Drever and Jim Molyneux, cellist Beth Porter, harpist Rachel Newton, and Senegal-born multi-instrumentalist Seckou Keita) create sublime music to reveal the beauty within.

Philadelphia foursome Full Bush return with the EP Movie Night (Brutal Panda Records). They’re the kind of post punk that’s reminiscent of Throwing Muses—raucous enough to have an edge, but with decided pop underpinnings that draw you in. Which means that while the opening track “Spooky” might start off in a quiet, even eerie fashion, the melodic hooks are so strong that by the time the raging chorus kicks in, you’re more than ready to go along for the ride.

The EP’s five tracks are something of a study in contrasts. An especially nice juxtaposition comes when the murmuring end of “Sweet and Low” — “Tell me how to love you, tell me what to say” — is abruptly followed by the snarling opening line of the next song, the EP’s title track: “You don’t understand shit!” There’s some wonderful lyrical imagery, such as the line “I’m not drunk, I’m just speaking in cursive,” from “Wild Heart.” They finally let loose on the final song, “One Second,” a coolly contemplative number that builds to an explosive finish. More, please!

Eva Gardner began her career in Mars Volta, and went on to play bass with the likes of Veruca Salt, Moby, Cher, and Pink. But the multi-instrumentalist steps out on her on her second EP, Darkmatter (self-released). “Is Love Enough” muses about the vagaries of romance against the backdrop of jangling guitars. Conversely, “California Bliss” is keyboard-based, an ode to escapism (“I want to stay here/away from the trouble”), with the kind of laid-back beat that conjures up visions of waves gently lapping at the shore.

Pop hooks abound; the playful “London Nights” has the lush sound of Dream Police-era Cheap Trick. There’s also an upbeat breeziness to the songs, even those expressing some trepidation about love (“Anywhere But Here”). The dreamy harmonies of “High Moon” lead into the tougher rhythms (and more jangling guitars) of “Let’s Call It a Day,” a call to lay down one’s metaphorical arms, bringing things to a conclusion on a conciliatory note.

The Supremes were one of the most successful all-female vocal groups of all time, and Mary Wilson was the only member who was there for the entire run, from the days of pre-Supremes group the Primettes in the late 1950s to the final days of the Supremes in 1977. Mary Wilson: The Motown Anthology (Real Gone Music/Second Disc Records) is the first set highlighting her work, right up to the present day.

The first track goes back to the Primettes era with “Pretty Baby,” the B-side of the group’s first single, “Tears of Sorrow,” released in 1960. “Pretty Baby,” which features Wilson’s lead vocal, is very much in the style of other “girl group” records of the period (the Chantels, the Shirelles). There are four previously unreleased Supremes songs featuring Wilson on lead, the best of which is her spirited take on “Son of a Preacher Man.” Other unreleased gems include two previously unreleased songs from the penultimate concert of the Diana Ross-Mary Wilson-Cindy Birdsong Supremes lineup in Las Vegas on January 13, 1970, sublimely smooth versions of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” and “Falling in Love.”

The two-disc set also features her underappreciated 1979 Mary Wilson album, making its debut on CD. You’ll also find what sadly turned out to be her last single, the reflective “Why Can’t We All Get Along,” released this past March, a month after her sudden death on February 8, 2021. This well-annotated set will likely stand as the definitive package of Mary Wilson’s musical accomplishments.

Looking for a way to educate younger listeners about the music of Black female artists? Take a look at She Raised Her Voice: 50 Black Women Who Sang Their Way Into History (Running Press Kids) written by music journalist Jordannah Elizabeth and illustrated by Briana Dengoue. It’s a fun, lively series of portraits of singers and musicians from Bessie Smith to Beyoncé, Leontyne Price to Poly Styrene, Tina Turner to Angélique Kidjo. It’ll surely inspire you to revisit the music of your old favorites, and seek out the tunes of the artists you’re not as familiar with; a great way to spend the holidays.

Meet Inkrewsive, Australia’s Only Fully Inclusive and Accessible Hip Hop Crew

Felicity Brown // Courtesy of Inkrewsive

“People with disabilities have the right to be heard. Some people have trouble with talking and it’s hard for them to communicate so we have to support everyone, no matter what their disability is. It’s not the disability, it’s the ability,” says Shea MacDonough, an MC in Melbourne hip hop collective Inkrewsive.  

Inkrewsive has been creating and performing hip hop for a decade now through arts organisation Wild At Heart, which works with professional musicians and multimedia artists to inform and empower disabled, mentally ill and socially disadvantaged Australians.

She has joined Audiofemme via Zoom, along with fellow MC Felicity Brown and Executive/Artistic Director of Wild At Heart Community Arts, Philip Heuzenroeder.

The morning we speak, Brown is running a bit late. She has had three seizures and has to be careful not to overexert herself during the interview. When she does show up, she is a riot of colour, from her rainbow-hued hair to her dangling, red bauble earrings. She first joined Inkrewsive a decade ago, and got involved with it again over the last year after taking a break.

“I’ve got depression and anxiety, a lot to do with mental health and all that stuff, and other disabilities that don’t help,” she explains. “I manage to get through them in doing hip hop, and I do songwriting as well. I do everything!”

For Brown and MacDonough, Inkrewsive is more than an artistic outlet, it’s a community and a family. The regular Thursday meetings, which have returned to their usual venue at Ministry of Dance in North Melbourne post-lockdown, are a place of solace and inclusion for Brown. “I get to be with my friends, especially my MC that I’m looking at,” she says with a cheeky smile for MacDonough. “I enjoy hip hop, dancing, rapping, creating songs and all that.”

“I’ve been involved in Inkrewsive for over 11 or 12 years now,” MacDonough shares. “Back then, I was an MC hosting dance parties and all that. That’s been my favourite part, public speaking. I’ve been doing that for quite a while now.”

She adds: “It feels that we’re all family, all of us have different needs different abilities. I would not say disabilities. We all have that, but I don’t see that in the crew. I see everyone as who they are, definitely not their disability.”

The crew’s YouTube page showcases the many performances and videos they’ve recorded over the last decade. It’s not all gold chains and grills, but there’s definitely some serious swagger in the animal print suits, sunglasses, and the take-no-shit lyrics of “Superstar.”

The song isn’t just about fronting, though; it’s an assertion of boundaries, of self-worth, and of demands for a more inclusive world. “Get out of my space, who do you think you are? You don’t know even know me, I’m a superstar!” goes the point-blank chorus.

“All of us have our own song to perform,” MacDonough says. “Some of us have difficulty with writing, reading and stuff. I sometimes have to take it easy, talk slowly, don’t rush it. I know that Phil tells the crew ‘Don’t rush it, keep it clear!’ I always keep my raps clear because I’ve got a fair few in my book at home, my personal ones.”

MacDonough writes and raps about what matters to her: living with Down syndrome, growing up and living as a disabled woman in Australia, and advocating for inclusion in all aspects of society, not least the performing and entertainment world. She’s been a part of it since she began dancing in primary school; she continued with dance through high school, and has since joined a dance company that provides classes for children and young adults with Down syndrome.

“Back when I was younger I loved to dance, especially on stage, so that’s one of my passions,” she says. “I’m in a dance company called Emotion21 and I’m their ambassador alongside [singer and actor] Tim Campbell.”

Shea MacDonough // Courtesy of Inkrewsive

Luckily, her passion and talent for dancing, rapping and MCing was not starved for an outlet during the pandemic. Despite lockdowns preventing access to their usual meetings, the crew met up via Zoom and worked with a wide range of Melbourne’s most eminent hip hop, dance and breakbeat talent as mentors, including Elf Tranzporter, Bricky B, and MC Yung Philly.

It was Yung Philly, together with Bengali rapper Cizzy, who came on board to help with a unique collaboration to celebrate the International Day Of People With Disabilities on December 3rd. The 13-strong Inkrewsive co-wrote and performed “Lockdown E Bondho” (“Because of the Lockdown”) with six intellectually disabled students from the Monovikas School in Kolkata, India. The track was formed as an ode to solidarity and perseverance in the face of suffering. Filmmakers in Melbourne and Kolkata worked with the artists to create a video that represented each of the crew and their performative strengths.

“I thought it was absolutely beautiful,” says Felicity Brown. “When Phil gave us the link to start off, it was a once-in-a-lifetime [opportunity] to actually be with them even though we couldn’t go to India. Just being with them on Zoom made us feel like we were actually there. Also, we were mentoring them with the kind of stuff we do, teaching them what we were doing. And they would mentor us with what they were learning.”

MacDonough chimes in: “I got to learn how they lived. We mentored them, like Felicity said. They showed us how they dance and their Bengali language… we got to actually talk in Bengali along with our music video that we did. [Using] their language and our language – Bengali and English – we collaborated with them, and everyone around the world has a chance to be heard.”

When the video was launched, Brown says, “We were excited.”

MacDonough immediately exclaims, “More than excited!”

It wasn’t the only highlight of the year. On November 27th, they opened Ability Fest 2021, a music festival organised by Australian three-time Paralympian and gold-medalist Dylan Alcott in response to the lack of accessible, safe and inclusive live music opportunities for disabled Australians.

“At Ability Fest, we performed a few of our old songs. We felt it was a privilege to actually perform at the Ability Fest, and after we performed, we got to see [Dylan Alcott]. I was excited to actually get to meet him in person,” says MacDonough. “He said that we all killed it, and nailed it, smashed it. He said to me, after we had performed, that I was the best rapper he’d seen. I would say that everyone was the best, not just me. It was the whole crew that did it.”

MacDonough has grown up with Inkrewsive, and it’s evident in her confidence and compassion that she will be an invaluable mentor to younger and newer members of the crew well into the future. “I used to get teased quite a lot, but not anymore,” she admits. “Because I’ve got a disability, it doesn’t mean that I can’t talk, communicate to others, tell them how I feel.”

Follow Inkrewsive on Instagram for ongoing updates.

5 of the Best Country Christmas Songs of 2021

Photo Credit: Andrew Eccles / Ilde and Jim Cook for Cookhouse Media

The Christmas spirit is in full swing in Nashville, and with it comes a variety of holiday songs from some of the best artists in the city. The 2021 holiday season finds the likes of Pistol Annies, Brett Eldredge and singer-songwriter Lori McKenna offering festive Christmas-themed projects that capture the heart of the season. Additionally, Grammy-nominated Americana singer Allison Russell offers a moving rendition of a Christmas classic, and rising star Tenille Townes channels childhood memories on “Christmas Cards.” Some are playful, some are nostalgic, and others honor the reverence of the holiday. Here are five of the best country Christmas songs.

Lori McKenna – “Christmas Without Crying”

It’s difficult to pick the most compelling song off singer-songwriter Lori McKenna’s exquisite EP, Christmas is Right Here, but “Christmas Without Crying” showcases the Grammy winning songwriter’s mastery of lyrical imagery like no other. Here, McKenna bypasses the fanfare of the Christmas season to capture the many layers of nostalgia the holiday brings. The poignant number finds her exploring the glory days gone by, painting an image of herself on Christmas morning with a smile on her face so big her eyes are closed. But she also touches on the memories, and people, of the past that cross one’s mind during the holiday season. By acknowledging the specifics of what makes the holidays bittersweet, McKenna tells a Christmas story that is bound to resonate in one’s spirit. 

Best lyrics: “You can roll past that old high school and smile/At the glory days long gone by/You’ll be thinking about Grandpa/When you’re stringing up those lights/And that will be why/You can’t make it through Christmas without crying” 

Pistol Annies – “Joy”

It’s certainly a Hell of a Holiday when the Pistol Annies team up for their first Christmas album! Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angeleena Presley do not disappoint with their mix of sharply written originals and respectable covers. In between all the biting words and sassy phrases, the Annies sneak in “Joy,” a humble, acoustic-guitar led acknowledgment of how the feeling of joy reveals itself in simple ways. Each member of the trio beautifully conveys this, Presley sharing how joy shines through a smile, while Lambert admits it’s in slowing down time to realize what truly matters. For Monroe, who recently finished her final chemotherapy treatment for a rare form of blood cancer, joy is love, the driving force behind all that motivates her to keep moving forward, like a friend offering a hand to hold. From a group that often relies on their quick wit and clever lyricism to tell a tale, this is a welcomed moment of pure joy.

Best lyrics: “Love, so many ways/That’s all it takes/To get up and goin’ again/Love, all the joy it brings/Takes the time it needs/To show up like a long lost friend/Love, joy, it takes time” 

Allison Russell – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

You’d be hard pressed to find a more stirring rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” than Allison Russell’s. With deep violins and electric guitar supporting her, Russell’s voice carries the weight of the classic Christmas song. Her robust vocals blend gentleness with honesty and emotion, allowing each word to simmer. Russell’s vocal runs could give Judy Garland a run for her money, as her mournful interpretation reminds us that Christmas is not holly jolly for all. As a bonus, check out the Montreal native’s recording of the song in French, which is just as enchanting as the English version. 

Best lyrics: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on/Our troubles will be out of sight”

Brett Eldredge – “Mr. Christmas”

Brett Eldredge is arguably the king of Christmas music in the country world. His 2016 holiday LP Glow set the precedent for modern country Christmas albums with his jazzy swagger and Sinatra-like voice. He follows Glow with the equally strong 2021 effort, Mr. Christmas. Complete with a big band sound, the album’s title track sees Eldredge appropriately taking on the persona, tirelessly shining his holiday spirit with nods to candy skies, glitter trees and festive parties. Revelers won’t be able to deny the holiday cheer after one listen of this jazzy tune. 

Best lyrics: “Call me Mr. Christmas/I’ll make your spirit bright/I’ll dry your eyes with candy skies… Yeah, every wish will come true/Yeah, I’ll be Mr. Christmas for you”

Tenille Townes – “Christmas Cards”

One of two originals on her four-track EP Songs For Christmas, Tenille Townes’ “Christmas Cards” puts a nostalgic stamp on the collection. The Canadian native taps into the experience of letting go, while also expressing gratitude for the memories made along the way. She connects the magical childhood feeling of making a Christmas card in crayon for a beloved friend to the present day, as an adult looking back on the changing seasons. Her pure voice reflects the song’s honesty, creating a sweet Christmas tune that has equal power to bring a smile to one’s face and tears to their eyes. 

Best lyrics: “Someone you loved along the way/Becomes someone you used to know/Thank you for the picture, thank you for the past/And I hope you smile as easy in between the camera flash/So here’s to another year/Here’s to our memory” 

Dylan Dunn Works Through Loneliness and Anger on Blue Like You EP

Photo courtesy of Press Here

Rather than letting his emotions get the best of him, Dylan Dunn writes about them – carefully cutting around the edges of each, then unfolding them like a string of paper dolls on his debut EP, Blue Like You, independently released on December 10.

“I’m dead in the head/Living on the outside/I’ve got lemonade in my eyes,” he sings, shuffling across a foamy, bluesy undercurrent on standout track “Lemonade Eyes.” The song serves as a salve for feelings of “not being alright,” written with a keen awareness of and reliance on emotion rather than specific details. “I thought a good way of tackling the problem would be trying to understand my raw emotions,” says Dunn.

Fortunately, as sad as he is on the record, he doesn’t feel this way often. “When I am feeling that way I like to approach it as something that connects me to others,” he tells Audiofemme. “I want that feeling to be something that makes it possible for me to relate to others, rather than something that isolates me from them.”

Later, “Wave Catcher” stands in sharp contrast, a more languid setpiece that gives even Dunn room to breathe. “Waiting for the one big thing to shock me awake, real or fake/Drowning in a river made of tears now,” he sings, watching said tears turn into “a sea of self-doubt” at his feet.

The muted guitar number encompasses Dunn’s deep self-reflection, and excises emotions that he “used to struggle with a lot more than I do today,” he says. “The song started to come together when I began being more honest with myself about these feelings and wanting to let them out in some way.”

Moments later, the Nashville-born, Memphis-based musician switches gears yet again; “Beautiful Disaster” is a dream, almost a full-on lullaby, swaddled in a lilting folk arrangement. Naturally, his lyrics remain as heart-splitting as ever. “You’re a sheep in wolf’s attire/You keep an x-ray of your heart close by,” he sings in a faint whisper.

It’s hard to imagine another production choice than the enchanted execution of this one, effective as it is in accentuating Dunn’s narrative. The juxtaposition is vital to the magic; at least Dunn thinks so. “The song tells the story of feeling like you failed someone and hoping you can give them closure,” he says. “But to counter this, I wanted the music to be soft and relaxing to create a balance.”

Dunn keeps connective musical tissues throbbing throughout the EP. The five songs feel connected, but only loosely so. Opening track “Such a Freak,” for example, unwraps with tenderness before an EDM-style drop shocks your nervous system. Then, “Hopeless Romantic” feels like a genre-blurring Ed Sheeran b-side. This musical diversity “happened for a reason,” Dunn explains. “Each song describes something different, and they revolve around the feeling of not being okay. Each song approaches it in different ways, so I think it’s only natural that the music would mirror the emotion of each one.”

Dunn’s musical explorations began when he was just four years old, messing around with his mother’s guitar. “When I was little kid, I thought that guitarists strummed with their knuckles; I found out I was wrong. Very wrong,” he recalls. “But once I discovered what a pick was, I’d spend hours playing short songs for fun – and while I’m sure they sounded like random noise to any listeners, I could hear them clearly in my head.”

Obsessed with artists like Queen and Electric Light Orchestra, especially “the way their music swells and subsides,” Dunn brings a similar “rising and falling instrumentality” to his own work. As far as influential guitar grooves and chords go, he’s always been transfixed by Doc Watson’s acoustic plucking style. “When playing blues, I really like to let it flow naturally, and even though my music isn’t blues by nature, I feel that it carries over into my writing from time to time,” Dunn says.

In high school, he performed in several bands and wrote much of the music. “But I never felt like I truly resonated with what I was writing,” he admits. “So I took a step back from the band stuff. I started writing for me, as opposed to writing for others, and that’s when I started writing what would become Blue Like You.”

Produced by Adam Castilla of The Colourist, Blue Like You comes with an ambient afterglow, as Dunn moves from the rhythmic uprooting of “Lemonade Eyes” into the pluckier “Hopeless Romantic.” Or as he crashes from “Wave Catcher” into the startling fragility inside “Beautiful Disaster.” There’s a strength to his melodies; that’s a facet of songwriting where he says he’s shown the most growth “by learning what sounds good and what doesn’t.” He adds, “The past year has been really interesting, and it’s opened me up to quite a few new sounds.”

Blue Like You doesn’t just plant his proverbial flag on the pop scene – it has also served to move him forward as a human being. “[It’s] helped me learn how important self-expression is to me and how it’s okay to take things at your own pace when necessary,” he says.

Follow Dylan Dunn on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Five Can’t-Miss 2021 Albums from the Eclectic New Zealand Music Scene

Kendall Elise // Photo Credit: Kristin Cofer

Australian music press and fans often look to the US and UK when seeking new sounds. It is to our detriment though, when so many diverse and divinely talented musicians and producers are emerging from the North and South Islands of New Zealand (Aotearoa in Maori).

From the nufolk, gothic, country-tinged ballads of Kendall Elise to the fresh, ambient pop of French For Rabbits, the heartbreakingly soulful Hollie Smith or the dark, strange and compelling Proteins of Magic and OV PAIN, there’s every reason to indulge in a deep dive into New Zealand’s 2021 album releases. Do yourself a favour, even, and book a trip. The epic, abundant natural beauty of the landscape and its diversity might make sense of the enormous variation in art and artists from this Pacific destination.

The following list is but a drop in the ocean of New Zealand’s music scene; in the coming year, readers can look forward to many more features on New Zealand artists in Audiofemme’s Playing Melbourne column. Stay tuned!

Kendall Elise – Let The Night In

Kendall Elise, from Papakura in Auckland, released the darkly soulful country album Let The Night In in August. Her sophomore effort is rich with hauntingly romantic, gorgeously spare ballads. “I Want” is proof Elise can’t neatly be classified as pure country. It’s a crooner, wrapped up in a plaintive, weeping guitar embrace that speaks of open windows and a thundering storm approaching.

She admits she wears her jeans too tight and likes her music too loud on a rip-roaring cover of Suzie Quatro’s “Your Mamma Won’t Like Me;” furious, barnstorming guitar drives the message home with grit. There’s a whisper of traditional English folk ballad “Greensleeves” in the guitar-based melody  and melancholy harmonies on “A Kingdom.”

After gaining attention with her self-produced EP I Didn’t Stand A Chance in 2017, she drew enough crowdfunded support to release her debut album Red Earth in 2019. Let The Night In was recorded in lieu of her COVID-cancelled 2020 Europe tour – it’s sparing, stormy, sultry and stunning across all 10 tracks.

French For Rabbits – The Overflow

Salty air, sparkling ocean waves, the brightness of sun glinting off mossy rocks – these refreshing sensations are easily evoked by Poneke, Wellington band French For Rabbits on their track “The Overflow.” It can be found on their third album of the same name, released in November.

Brooke Singer adds vocal gilt to the delicate instrumentals and dreamy electropop of guitarist John Fitzgerald, drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa, and multi-instrumentalists Ben Lemi and Penelope Esplin. While their past albums – 2017’s The Weight of Melted Snow and 2014’s Spirits – have rooted the mood in more solemn, sad territory, there’s a languid sweetness, a freshness, to the ten tracks showcased here.

Hollie Smith – Coming In From The Dark

Hollie Smith released her fourth solo album in October, and Coming In From The Dark more than justifies her four-decade strong career. The album showcases high-caliber collaborations, including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (which features on the dramatic, full-throated title track), Sol3 Mio (on theatrical pop-operetta “You”) and Raiza Biza (on the slow burn of trippin’ R&B slow-trap “What About”).

Ultimately, the full-body feels are delivered simply by Smith’s sensational vocals. She’s an established artist in New Zealand who began singing in earnest as a teenager in local jazz outfits in Auckland. She went on to record and tour internationally with her father, an expert in Celtic music, before taking the solo path from her Wellington base in the 2000s. Her 2007 debut album Long Player sold double-platinum and scooped a bunch of New Zealand Music Awards. She followed it up with Humour and the Misfortune of Others in 2010 and her third album Water or Gold in 2016, as well as two collaborative albums: Band of Brothers Vol. 1 with Mara TK and Peace of Mind with Anika Moa and Boh Runga. Why hasn’t Australia tried to claim her yet? Maybe we tried and failed. Our loss; Smith is never forgotten once you’ve heard her sing.

Proteins of Magic – Proteins of Magic

How do you describe the unusual, totally captivating strangeness of Kelly Sherrod and Proteins of Magic? Just like that, I suppose. It’s a bizarre, wonderful pagan spell that’s conjured in her cross-border project that sees her living and working between her homes in Auckland and Nashville.

There’s a Laurie Anderson vibe to Sherrod’s operatic, gothic delivery over esoteric electronica on her debut self-titled album, released in August. If you can imagine, it capably combines elements of Enya’s dramatic, atmospheric “Orinoco Flow” and the odd sound-and-voice nightmare vision of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” with the hyperreal, disjointed techno-cool of Miss Kittin & The Hacker’s “Frank Sinatra.” But then, “The Book” is a piano-led, ghostly lament that is absolutely, heart-rendingly beautiful, defying comparisons. In November, Proteins of Magic released stand-alone single “Willow,” a multi-layered, witchy brew of synths, bouncy basslines and punchy digital drums.

Sherrod’s musical debut was as frontwoman for Punches in 2003, followed by playing bass for Dimmer before she moved to Nashville in 2009, painting and recording in her home studio when she wasn’t touring with the likes of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Her schedule is busy with festivals in New Zealand in early 2022, and seems ample reason for organising a January roadtrip via Auckland.

OV PAIN – The Churning Blue of Noon

Renee Barrance and Tim Player are Dunedin-originated, Melbourne-based OV PAIN. Their second album The Churning Blue of Noon is a more eclectic, experimental beast than their debut self-titled album of 2017. The duo had been nourished by a diet of drone, free jazz and instrumental work, and combined with the apocalyptic global pandemic scenario, their creative vision became murky with gothic, end-of-times moodiness. The August release was admittedly recorded in Melbourne, the duo’s second home.

Player is the Bela Lugosi-esque narrator on “Ritual In The Dark Part 1,” over a hollow-hearted digital organ. Warped, distorted synth fills the atmosphere, and from a ghostly parallel universe, Barrance’s dystopic vocals croon and hum on “Excess and Expenditure.” The track epitomises the feel of the whole album, a dark masterpiece.

Vocal Powerhouse Shaina Shepherd Brings Seattle Together with “Never Be Another You”

Photo Credit: Rachel Bennet Photography

When singer Shaina Shepherd was growing up in Tacoma, she savored the opportunity to watch her mom sing in church. It was there, belting on-stage with the choir, where her mother would “shine”—and where Shepherd learned what was possible for herself, too.

“I could see her be her true self,” she tells Audiofemme. “[It] got me thinking about who I wanted to be.”

Today, Shepherd’s the one on stage, drawing in joyful eyes. Since moving to Seattle in 2014, she has turned heads as the powerful lead vocalist in Seattle rock outfit, Bearaxe, in her own Shaina Shepherd Band, and most recently, as the solo performer of “Never Be Another You,” a cover of the soulful 2016 hit from Lee Fields & The Expressions.

Shepherd’s version of “Never Be Another You,” released November 18th, is the result of a collaboration between major Seattle businesses Nordstrom and Sub Pop, the work of community-minded nonprofits like Black Fret and Africatown Community Land Trust, and the talent of a cast of additional Seattle music greats. “Never Be Another You,” is featured prominently in Nordstrom’s 2021 “Closer to You” holiday campaign and will benefit the Seattle nonprofit Africatown Community Land Trust.

Doing community work that brings together and benefits Seattle musicians and beyond is not an uncommon for Shepherd. In fact, after she moved to Seattle and began to get noticed in Bearaxe, she also began to develop an in-person and live stream concert series called Artist’s Way to benefit the local music industry that had been so disrupted during the pandemic.

“It happened because [local musicians] needed a gig. Our gigs got cancelled because of the pandemic and we just ended up building our own concert. That project has kind of continued throughout the pandemic and grew and… it also gave me an opportunity to continue to work on my craft and become a better singer through the concept we were building,” she says.

Artist Way’s impact attracted the attention of heavyweights on the Seattle music scene, like Ben London, founder of Seattle’s Black Fret, a nonprofit dedicated to helping local musicians thrive and whom Shepherd had previously connected with during her time with Bearaxe.

“During the pandemic I ended up getting to work with Ben a little bit more and he’s always trying to build opportunities for artists and musicians to get work. He built an opportunity to commission a song for Nordstrom,” she says. “They saw, and were inspired by, what I was doing in my community and building programs and also the way I sing. So they built this all-star band of people who are Seattle music legends. We just got in the studio and recorded a song. And the song turned out really great. We all loved it. Then Megan Jasper at Sub Pop said… they would put it out.”

The lively and uplifting single, which Shepherd recorded at ExEx Studio and Avast Studios in Seattle, features a cast of Seattle music greats including guitarist Jeff Fielder (Mark Lanegan Band, Sera Cahoone), Michael Musburger on drums (Damien Jurado), Ty Bailie on keys (MudHoney), and mastering by Ed Brooks (Death Cab for Cutie). And, per Shepherd’s wishes, all proceeds earned from the sale and streaming of the single are going to to Africatown Community Land Trust (ACLT), a nonprofit based in Seattle’s Central District, which empowers and preserves the Black Diaspora community in the area through land ownership, development, and stewardship.

“I suggested Africatown because they have been, during this pandemic, during the protests over at CHOP, they have been really popping out to me and inspiring me to keep going, to keep moving. So I was like, my heart is telling me to get back to them and everyone agreed that they are awesome and doing great work,” explains Shepherd.

Shepherd will follow up “Never Be Another You,” with the release of her pre-recorded KEXP webcast on December 22. And, in 2022, Shepherd hopes to release a debut record with the Shaina Shepherd band, which formed after the shutdown.

“I want to put out a body of work that represents the times I’ve had through 2020. I have a whole bunch of tunes. When I was in the middle of the pandemic, I didn’t have anybody to play with. But I found these guys—James Squires, Dr. Quinn, and Nick Jessen. And you know… they’ve imbued themselves into the songs [I wrote by] myself in isolation.” says Shepherd. “So, shout out to my first band ever, and then shout out to Black Fret… and shout out to Sub Pop and Nordstrom for giving me the support that I needed to have some kind of impact. Seattle’s my hometown now!”

Follow Shaina Shepherd on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Shanique Marie Helps Keep Kingston Collective Equiknoxx Organic and Eclectic on Basic Tools LP

Photo Credit: Summer Eldemire

Opening with a serpentine, strange and seductive rhyme, then layering in stuttering, boxy beats, Equiknoxx keep it dark and spicy on their latest mixtape Basic Tools. For international fans outside of the UK and Europe, the release is likely their introduction to the Kingston, Jamaica collective, made up of producers Gavsborg (Gavin Blair), Time Cow (Jordan Chung), Bobby Blackbird (Nick Deane), and vocalists Shanique Marie and Kemikal.

Shanique Marie is pure magic. She is truly a vocalist in the sense that she sings, raps, hums, freestyles and ultimately weaves her soulful, sure-footed voice into whatever form feels right at the time. She is both an integral part of Equiknoxx and a solo artist, having released her debut album – Gigi’s House, named after her biggest fan, her mother – in mid-2021. When we connect on Zoom, she is at home in Kingston, stifling a yawn at the end of the day, but she regularly segues into song to illustrate what she is describing or remembering. It’s a captivating, small-scale performance.

“I’m pretty sure I can speak on behalf of the entire group when I say this. When I talk about our sound being organic and our creation of music being organic, I mean that it is something that comes from within and something that comes very naturally to us,” she says. “It’s almost magical, in a sense, how things fall into place where our music is concerned. It can just be a conversation that we’re having in the studio that becomes a line that starts a song, or a rhythm is built around this, or a sound that we hear that Gavin, Jordan or Nick are like, ‘oh, we have to sample this!’”

The squiggly samples and funky percussion of “UGGH” is a prime example. Gavin and Shanique were having a phone conversation when Gavin said, “You sound like UGGH!” A moment later, he exclaimed, “I’m gonna make a song!” He duly took the line and built the song from it.

“Much of the songs Gavin and I work on tend to be like that, where we’re literally having a conversation and Gavin or Nick makes a joke, or Jordan makes a joke, and then it’s like, ‘we can make a song from this!’, you know?” she says.

Their rough and tumble sound reveals the group’s genius for creating textures from processed bird sounds, smudging beats into odd time, liberally enriching the sonic soup with cymbals, gongs, choir samples and comical vocal snippets, and a quirky, macabre sense of humour. Bird Sound Power, released in 2016, was a compilation of Gavsborg and Time Cow’s productions dating back to 2009. Colón Man – in a sense, their first traditional album, made as a cohesive collection – arrived a year later, attracting “Best Of” listings for FACT, Resident Advisor, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork. Eternal Children was arguably their most accessible album for mainstream hip hop and pop audiences in 2019, in no small part thanks to Shanique’s hook-laden, butter-melting vocals. Perhaps, too, the world was ready for their oddball musical courtship of our eardrums. We’d been primed by the retro-sleaze R&B of Blood Orange, the mad beats and humour of Madlib, and the timeless adventurousness of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.

Equiknoxx is both the name of the collective, and also the name of their label, Equiknoxx Music. Operational since 2007, they’ve been making intriguing, body-moving, slinky music that sweeps through the trap-reggaeton-electro sphere for just over a decade. Throughout Basic Tools, the groove is so deep you wonder how you’ll clamber out of the funky, hypnotic, languorous beats and patois-laced rhymes. Elsewhere, barely restrained snarls, rapid-fire raps and layered, haunting harmonies threaten to become the matter of urban nightmares. Whether it’s a double-entendre or a straight-up reference to “eating bananas,” drive-by shootings, or queens who do Kegels, the rhymes are clever, sometimes funny, often skewering the listener when they dare to get complacent with their attention.

It’s hard to imagine anyone ignoring Shanique Marie, though.

Raised in a very traditional Christian family, she used to sing in church choirs and spent a lot of time with her grandparents, listening to Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Charley Pride, Otis Redding, Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald. A neighbour overheard the then-17-year-old singing and insisted on introducing her to some friends with a studio. Shanique Marie’s mother was having none of it.

“Equiknoxx was rising in the local dancehall scene… but the thing about Jamaican and even Caribbean culture is that young girls are never encouraged to go into the studio because the whole idea is that it’s gonna be a lot of males that are going to be smoking weed. Young females might be taken advantage of, so growing up in a very traditional, religious family, my mom was like ‘School is the focus, there is no going to studio,’” she recounts.

Instead, Shanique began a conversation with Gavin via MSN Messenger.

“But of course, I was younger than him and at the time, nobody took me seriously.”

Years later, they did. Shanique was midway through her Bachelor of English Literature (and has since graduated, along with a Masters in Education Management) when her work with some event promoters lead her back into the Equiknoxx studio to record a jingle promoting a local party. Gavin was sitting in a corner throughout the session and at the end of the hour, Shanique approached him to introduce herself. What began with her working as a background vocalist on his beats for other artists evolved into a much more equal billing as her adaptability, range and confidence emerged.

“It’s so ironic how the universe works and how things just fall into place,” she reflects. “This was the path that was ordained for me. At one point I was really pushed into the academic path and I had put music down. There’s a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and she talks about how ideas find you, and I apply that to my life. Reconnecting with Gavin and the crew really just confirmed for me what my purpose is on this Earth… music just accosted me. Music came back and was like ‘Excuuuuse me, hello!’”

From 2009, Gavsborg and Bobby Blackbird had been making beats for dancehall stars, including Beenie Man. Then, in 2013, Poland-based reggae DJ 27Pablo invited Gavsborg and Masicka to perform at his club. It was impossible to refuse, since he’d named the club “Equiknoxx” in homage to the crew he’d met in Jamaica. They put together a four-track EP (Equiknoxx Introduces Masicka to King Tubby) to entice Polish fans to come see them, establishing their international career in earnest. Their second home, Manchester, is also a base for the collective but they’re equally likely to be in a club in Lisbon or Berlin.

“We do travel to Manchester quite a bit,” Shanique confirms. “The UK has always been a second home for me and a stomping ground where a lot of music is made for us as a group and as individuals within the group. We do a lot of work with Swing Ting and they’re based out of Manchester. We also work out of London, as well.”

Their theatrical, sweaty performances fuse Shanique Marie’s solo songs with Equiknoxx group productions, criss-crossing through tracks from Basic Tools, Eternal Children, Colón Man, and Gigi’s House. Don’t expect a US tour too soon, though.

“We’ve done some awesome shows in the US, but we found that the market for us has been stronger in Europe and the UK,” explains Shanique Marie. “We’ve done some really wicked shows for Red Bull, Marfa Festival in Texas, we performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York… but our sound, that whole electronic dancehall fusion, has had a much stronger appeal in the UK and Europe.”

For Shanique Marie, the connection is clear.

“UK garage, dance and grime, drum ‘n’ bass, those are the places where it’s still at the forefront of performances. I’ve never been puzzled by it. I think it just makes sense given that those genres are so prevalent, whereas it’s more of an underground scene in the US; it’s not mainstream, it’s not pop culture,” she reasons.

The immediacy of Equiknoxx’s music is what hooks you in. It doesn’t feel laboured, manipulated, or manufactured to the nth degree by labels and promoters. They’re present. They’re organic. They’re loving making this multi-layered, strange beast of a track in real time as much as you’ll love twerking and twisting to it in your living room. It is the unexpected laugh in the studio, or an exasperated sigh, or an ill-timed clash of cymbals or feedback that can kick off a whole creative adventure in storytelling. Listening to Equiknoxx is an invitation to hang out with the group, and while you might just have to go to Jamaica or London to do it in person, Basic Tools brings the collective to you in its bright, eclectic glory.

Follow Equiknoxx on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Sarah Elizabeth Haines Reaches Out to Reconnect with “In the Morning” Video

Photo Credit: John Carluccio

As a frequent touring musician, singer-songwriter Sarah Elizabeth Haines struggled to balance a professional and personal life. The seed for her new song “In the Morning” had burrowed into her mind, inspired by several “failed relationship attempts,” and eventually, its reflected lyrics offered her the space to “remind myself of some of the parts of long distance dating that weren’t actually too terrible.”

“It can be fun and exciting to miss someone, and to feel that longing of a relationship that’s young and tender and that you want to nurture,” Haines says. “You just don’t necessarily want that to be the great majority of the relationship or it starts to feel like a fantasy you’re making.”

“In the morning light everything would be alright/If you were here with me,” she hums over bouncing drums. “Every time that you’re around/Be it alone or in a crowd/You’re the only one I see.”

The music video premieres today on Audiofemme and finds Haines collaborating with long-time friend and director John Carluccio. “He and I did a few photo shoots out in Joshua Tree early this year, and we spent a lot of time talking about how we both were trying to hone our creative visions as artists and what that meant for each of us, individually, and there was already a lot of crossover there,” Haines explains.

After discussing how best to bring the song to life, the creative process itself was as organic as it could be. A strong level of trust had already formed between them; Haines even let Carluccio “choose which of the singles he wanted to work on, and then he sent me a few treatments,” she says. “We decided to go for this dreamy sort of David Lynch-inspired flashback sequence, and I’m so thrilled with the way it turned out.”

“In the Morning” comes on the heels of “Water,” both samplings to Haines’ forthcoming new record, Castaway, due February 25, 2022. Admittedly, the latest offering is “probably the least intense song on the record in many ways, but that’s exactly why I love the space it does take up,” she says of its placement on the LP.

Castaway deals in many themes, and among its central concepts is “how we as people, and I think, as female artists especially, are often expected to present ourselves in a neat little easily digestible box so that people always know exactly what to expect from us,” she says, “but that’s so far from anyone’s actual experience in the world. We all have messy, complicated, sometimes even contradictory feelings all the time; we find ourselves loving someone who’s hurt us or resenting someone who loves us or full of regret or making up an ideal of someone who doesn’t really exist the way that you want them to when you look at them in the light of day.”

“Sometimes we just need a mirror — and sometimes we’re allowed to just be gentle and loving and hopeful,” she adds. And that’s the vantage point from which “In the Morning” is delivered, an almost celestial performance emanating warm lavender.

But the song, ironically, sprouted and grew under intense conditions. In pre-pandemic days, Haines was well-equipped in spending long stretches of time without family or friends. Looking back, it took remarkable self-reliance to paddle through her days. “At certain points on tour, I definitely let the pendulum swing a little too far in the other direction of trying to convince myself I was fine being out on my own. That’s not to say that I’ve been completely cut off from friends—I’ve made some really great, lasting friendships on tour too—it’s just sort of like a weird traveling circus where you see each other every day anyway at work.”

When the pandemic hit, those feelings were further amplified. She eventually learned what it meant to simply exist in stillness, but it took time. “I wasn’t even moving around or working really at all so there were absolutely no distractions,” she says. “I definitely came out of that with a better understanding of myself and a greater sense of peace in stillness than I’ve ever had before. It also taught me that it’s really not so hard to pick up the phone and call someone just to say hello, and I’ve definitely been doing that a lot more recently.”

Such reflections evolved into deep inner work, and as a result, she unlocked her “own power” and now embraces “the messiness of being a human being” in ways she never imagined. “In spending so much time with myself, I found that there’s so much there that deserves to be nurtured, and that if you don’t crush yourself over your mistakes, they’ll end up being more fertile soil for growth.”

This inward journey soon cast ripples into her work, as well. “I learned a lot of new skills during the pandemic out of necessity. I ended up engineering part of my own record and co-producing on it,” she explains. She linked up with co-producer Kevin Salem during lockdown and began ironing out preliminary album details.

Aside from her solo work, Haines plays viola and violin as part of the touring company of Hamilton, as well as with chamber group Contemporaneous. When the world slowly opened up again earlier this year, the singer-songwriter was most surprised by how quickly she was able to settle back into the pre-pandemic routine.

“The first few shows back [for Hamilton] were a wild rush, absolutely, and it’s amazing to feel connected to an audience again,” she says. “But I do think at the end of the day, when you’ve played the same thing almost 900 times (it’s already been over 100 shows since I’ve been back), and since we’re in the pit so we’re generally hidden from most of the audience, it’s just refreshing to feel like it’s something almost completely normal.”

Solo shows are another matter, though. “The few solo shows I have played since the pandemic have definitely been a different story,” she concludes. “It’s like I’m learning to walk all over again in certain ways, and a bit of the performance anxiety that I had mostly gotten over in previous years has returned ever so slightly, but it’s been incredibly exhilarating after such a long time without.”

Follow Sarah Elizabeth Haines on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Bush Tetras Celebrate Four Decades of Fuzzy-Guitared Funkiness On “Best Of” Boxset

Photo Credit: Bob Krasner

New York City in the early 1980s was a jungle of musical genres. No wave, hip hop, R&B, soul, jazz and punk informed the sound of the streets, clubs, parks and gyms, escaping from headphones and pumped from car stereos. Patti Smith had arrived a decade earlier, traipsing bookstores and vinyl shops during the day and riveting audiences at night with her unique spoken word-freewheelin’ rock, jazz performances at night. Madonna was wearing scrunchies, cropped shirts, fishnets and high tops, Debbie Harry was seducing CBGBs, and Talking Heads were pulling strange geometric shapes on stage. Afrobeat was emerging in the clubs and making its way into the percussive drive of punk and dance with street press reviewing Beastie Boys alongside Afrika Bambaataa. MTV was in its infancy, but there was no doubt the city was the place to be for music lovers, whether they wanted to thrash about wildly on dancefloors in the early hours of morning or pick up an instrument of some type and form a ramshackle band.

Out of this melting pot came post-punk progenitors Bush Tetras, who released their debut single “Too Many Creeps” in 1980. Splitting up in 1983 before their first studio LP was released, they’ve formed and reformed over the years, having evolved their sound through various iterations. Three album boxset Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras, released in early November via Wharf Cat Records, finally compiles their musical output, showcasing 29 songs (plus some live versions) from their catalogue stretching back to their formation in 1979.

Bush Tetras are practically synonymous with New York City, though Dee Pop (Dimitri Papadopolous), born in Queens, was the only New York native in the original lineup. With an intoxicating allure for outsiders, and a ‘weirder-the-better’ attitude towards its eclectic residents, the Big Apple’s siren call lured Cynthia Sley from Cleveland, Pat Place from Chicago, and their original bassist Laura Kennedy from Detroit.

“I had been designing clothes,” recalls Sley, who has lived in NYC for 42 years now. “I had just made all these stage clothes for Lydia Lunch for her tour on ZE Records. I was a visual artist, but I was really into fashion and film, and New York was like a Mecca. I just wanted to do something creative and I felt like Cleveland was limited… I felt like it was really happening in New York, everybody knew it was the hub.”

Originally an aspiring visual artist, Place had dance-punk cred already as a founding member of no-wave act Contortions, which was memorably featured on Brian Eno’s 1978 compilation No New York. She had also starred in feminist Vivienne Dick’s experimental films. Kennedy and Place were lovers who’d been living together for a year before Sley made the move. Sley recalls being cajoled into joining Bush Tetras, since she’d known Kennedy at art school in Cleveland.

“I met Pat through Laura… Pat had quit the Contortions and started up a band with Laura and Dee Pop. They started playing with Adele Bertei as a singer, but it didn’t quite work out. So then they strong handed me into doing that,” Sley says. “I was, believe it or not, a bit shy, so I had to be talked into it.”

The sense of community offered by music and art that rebelliously avoided pigeon-holing, gentrification and commercial motives was born of the scrappy, DIY attitude of young New Yorkers living downtown at a time when it was cheap, but dingy and dangerous. Still, women making music outside of the safe confines of folk, pop ballads or R&B was a novelty, and women wielding guitars they’d taught themselves how to play sent ripples of fear and excitement through the live music scene at the time.

“There was definitely a lack of women in music, absolutely, but I think because of no wave and Tina Weymouth on bass and Patti Smith, there were some new women coming on the scene that were really standing out and it made it a possibility for little punk girls like us to get involved in music,” Sley says. “We just thought, why not? You didn’t really need to be proficient at your instrument. I didn’t have to take vocal lessons. You just had to have the right chemistry.”

Bush Tetras with Clash drummer Topper Headon in 1982 // Photo Credit: Bob Gruen

There’s a lean, rangy swagger to Bush Tetras’ guitar riffs, a menacing rumble of fuzz escaping into distortion every so often. Sley elegantly enunciates every loving, brutal word in her sing-song/spoken word signature style, daring you to piss her off.

On “Sucker Is Born,” the somnific, languid strum of Place’s spangly guitar oozes with cosmically-charged atmosphere. Sley’s sultry croon emerges organically, an additional instrument: “Did you care at all when they found you out, or did you make it out…?” she asks. Minutes later, the drums wake up as if shaken wildly, the guitar emits furied distortion, and Sley wails, “A sucker is born!”

The pace is all go on the determined gallop of drums and sprawling guitar on the live version of “Run Run Run.” It’s a far cry from the Talking Heads-style smudged bass lines, high-pitched guitar tuning, synthesizer claps, deeply funky dance-punk of ironically titled “You Can’t Be Funky.” The clatter of odd percussion in some alien rhythm on “Moonlite” sounds like each band member recorded their parts to their own individual timing and somehow it just manages to hold together. The early influence of Afrobeat emerges in the eclectic, celebratory drums and deep, funky bass rhythms. Guitars chug along like revving engines on “Cowboys In Africa,” a cymbal punctuating the frenzy of angular, serrated-edge guitar and a drumbeat like hot heels running down New York pavement.

The pagan magic of “Rituals” is all-consuming in its gothic, baroque oddity: Nico-style droning vocals, dissonant, creepy guitars, the shake of tambourines, and the repeated mantra “I love you, but I love you, but I love you, but I love yoooouuuuu.” I admit to Sley that it’s a favourite, but immediately apologise for picking favourites from such a rich body of work. The song was founded on lyrics and a rhythm that Dee Pop had devised, Sley explains.

“That song to me has guitar and bass weaved together to form this kind of fabric for the vocals on top of it,” she adds. “The songs were very un-self-conscious. I don’t think we were really thinking of what was it going to sound like. We just kind of did what came naturally. We wrote ‘[You Can’t Be] Funky’ and ‘Cowboys [In Africa]’ all around the same time as ‘Rituals.’ ‘Rituals’ was Dee’s idea of that vocal line almost like percussion; it was very rhythmic, and we wrote it around that. It’s one of my favourites too!”

“I like ‘Stare,’ I like ‘Nails,’ I like ‘Page 18,’ I like one that we really don’t play anymore and it’s on the original Boom In The Night [LP],” says Place. “It’s weird listening to your own stuff, and I don’t do it that often… but there’s definitely tracks I listen to and think, ‘Hey, I really like that!’”

On Rhythm and Paranoia, the previously-unreleased “Cutting Room” finally gets an outing. Dee Pop had kept an archive and until his passing in early October this year, he was heavily involved in choosing and collating the boxset collection.

“Dee kept everything, so he found ‘Cutting Floor’ and that was a song we recorded with Henry Rollins,” recalls Sley. “Pat and I had completely forgotten about it. I don’t even remember singing that. I had no idea, so some things were really a surprise because I really did not remember that song.”

Really? She forgot working with the heavyweight Black Flag front man, Henry Rollins?

“Oh no! There’s not enough drugs in the world for that,” laughs Sley. “I definitely remember recording with him, but that song, ironically, ended up on the cutting floor. We recorded it but never released that song, and we’d do that. We’d have songs that we would play for a while and then we would discard them.”

As far as recording, Place and Sley have been prolific during the last two years. While they typically write in the same room, jamming and trading lyrics and riffs, their chemistry has remained potent even while co-creating via email along with new bassist R.B. Korbet (Pussy Galore, Missing Foundation). To date, they have ten songs as yet unrecorded, with a planned release in 2022.

“We were able to keep writing,” concludes Sley. “It’s a joyful thing to write in a very dark time.”

Follow Bush Tetras on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for ongoing updates.

Ziemba Grieves For Her Father On Christmas-Tinged LP Unsubtle Magic

Photo Credit: Ian Torres

“Destabilizing.” That’s the single word René Kladzyk says best encompasses her experience after the death of her father and through rising flood waters of grief. The singer-songwriter, best known under her musical pseudonym Ziemba, lost her father in early 2020 after he spent two weeks in the hospital over the Christmas season.

Her life all but burned to the ground — and with her brand new record, Unsubtle Magic, she sifts through the ash, both literally and figuratively. When her father’s health took a turn for the worse in late 2019, everything began to shift dramatically, even her relationship to holiday-themed music. “Losing a loved one over the holidays made all Christmas music take on a new tinge to me,” Kladzyk tells Audiofemme.

Admittedly, she never intended to make a record stitched with references to such classic Christmas songs as “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” but perhaps it was a necessary conduit of catharsis to confront her pain so boldly and brutally as possible. “I just kept writing songs that had this holiday frame or holiday lens. That was the context of my dad’s death,” she recognizes.

Beyond her father’s death, Kladzyk also experienced the loss of an aunt, uncle, and good friend. “My experience is not all that unique. A lot of people have really had to grapple with mortality and loss. It’s like the ground falls out from underneath you, and you have to relearn how to stand,” she says. “I wonder about all the different ways that people are going to be struggling this holiday season.”

In the weeks and months immediately following her father’s death, Kladzyk scrawled out the stray lyric and melody, but it wasn’t until late 2020 that she finished the first song. “Sandia Crest” finds her wondering, “Are we truly gone when we go?” over a bedrock of wind instruments and piano, making a lyrical reference to scattering her aunt’s ashes, which she says was “kind of a complicated process.”

“She died tragically, too,” Kladzyk recalls. “She had been a really bad alcoholic for many years, and I had stopped talking to her. She was a big part of my childhood, but in adulthood, I ended up stopping talking to her, as most of my family did. We all were estranged from her, which is really sad. She had very serious mental health issues — and she was alone when she died.”

As a result, the performance is sullen and weighted down, like shoving a boulder into the ocean. All the sorrow and the heartache bubbles around her as she sings, “The last time I heard her voice before she lost her soul/A goodbye to the swirling skies, swallowed by the stars,” bathing in the moment, simply existing without any concrete answers.

Kladzyk prompts another investigation into the afterlife with “Will You Haunt Me?” in which she retraces the moment when it “hit me that [my father] was actually going to die. We had to make the decision to take him off life support, and it was very fraught and confusing,” she recalls. “At first, they were really optimistic, but it quickly changed when he didn’t wake up. I remember walking down the hospital hallway and feeling my head hanging low in a way that it never had before. I don’t even know how to describe it. But it was like this utterly defeated feeling of helplessness that there’s nothing I can do.”

Meanwhile, the world around her continued to flicker right, as there were “literally babies being born. Every time a baby was born, they would play a little melody from ‘Rockabye Baby’ throughout the entire hospital. So you could always hear when a baby was born,” she says.

As her father died, the song’s sweet, bright melody washed over her. “It was a reminder that everybody’s just going about life,” she reflects. “Life is happening all around me, and my life had totally collapsed.”

The album cover, designed by Robert Beatty with art created by Dian Liang, frames her father’s final moments with a glimpse into the sun’s glaring, hopeful rays. “It’s this moment of looking out the hospital window to watch the sunrise on Christmas morning and trying to feel some amount of hope in it,” she explain.

Unsubtle Magic, co-produced with Don Godwin, relies heartily on “devastating defeat and overwhelming sadness” but filters the experiences through twinges of “sweetness and a feeling of home,” she explains. With “A Nightmare,” for example, Kladzyk observes the literal caving in of her childhood home, which her father bought in the ’70s. In 2020, she and her sister “had this incredibly painful problem of trying to deal with this property,” she says. In the song’s most incisive depiction of her ongoing struggle to cope, she sings with a quivering lip, “Part of me might die here.”

It’s a nail in the coffin, to say the least. “It felt like a whole new way of losing him,” she adds. “It was like losing the metaphysical home and physical home.”

She remembers the moment like it was yesterday. Kladzyk returned to Michigan to attend to things while her uncle was dying, so not only did she say final goodbyes but she closed an important chapter of her life. It was 17 degrees out, and snow capped decayed architecture and rotting beams offered a sobering depiction of everything in her life. “The second floor was caving into the first floor and I was running down the stairs as I heard the floor starting to cave in. I ran out of the house in a panic, and that’s the last time I ever went inside that house,” she recalls. “I was actually in the house, and the feeling was like it was falling in. My dog got loose in the yard, and it was really scary and overwhelming and sad.”

“Time doesn’t freeze just ’cause you want it to,” Kladzyk sings on “Time Doesn’t Freeze,” the exact phrase her sister said to her when dealing with the ramshackle homestead. “My dad just kind of left it as though it would stay how it was. He often wouldn’t deal with things, and he would just put it off as though you could keep putting it off forever. If we hadn’t sold it, the town was about to condemn it. It was a huge burden to put on us, because my dad hadn’t maintained it and hadn’t cleaned it out. Then, it was this emotional burden of not knowing if dad had things in there that were of value to him or would be of value to us.”

Furthermore, the piano-laced song grabbles with “the nature of change and entropy, and just how there’s no way to argue with it — and all the ways that silly humans try to pretend we can. We can try to hold onto a moment forever, but we just can’t. And then we’ll forget.”

“That’s another thing with death; you start really grappling with your own memory. You immediately start realizing all the things that you are slowly forgetting, like what it was like to hug that person,” she continues. “It’s a gradual process of going from being a very clear image in your mind’s eye to being a fuzzy image. That’s a horrible feeling. But it’s unavoidable. You can do things to improve your memory, like learning language or whatever, but you can’t bring that person back. You can’t feel the feeling again, except maybe in a dream, if you’re lucky.”

Kladzyk keeps her father’s memory alive through using the same family piano, now residing in her El Paso home, that she played growing up and her father used in his own musical career. “When my mom got pregnant, he just quit playing music entirely. He was operating at a time when the financial hurdles to record were much greater. So, even though he wrote and did demo recordings of tons and tons of songs, he only captured recordings with maybe four songs. During his 12-year musical career, he was a touring musician and had a circuit that he played and made a good living.”

Now, in possession of a collection of tapes, only four of which were complete, basic recordings, she found herself drawn to “Set In Ice,” which her father wrote in 1974. “I tried out a number of songs with the idea of covering them for this album. I really liked where [this song] sat in my voice. I didn’t change the key for that one, and I really liked how, thematically, it fit in the album,” she says.

One particular lyric struck her most. “Living by myself for so very long/Get up every morning just to sing these songs,” she sings amidst a flurry of percussion and guitar. Surprisingly, the visual brought her great comfort, “to imagine my dad in the ‘70s having those same feelings that I was having now. It felt like a way to connect to him, and it feels that way playing his songs, like a new way to get to know him and expand my relationship to a version of him that I never knew.”

Her father never spoke much about his musical days, except to “drop a crazy bomb” like the time he said he “went over to Tom Waits’ apartment, and the whole floor was covered in Burger King wrappers,” she shares with a laugh.

Unsubtle Magic is fraught with emotional tension. Kladzyk both surrenders to her grief and pushes to extricate herself from it. It’s that vital tug of war that acts as a heavy duty glue to keep her from falling apart, shockwaves vibrating through songs like “Only Lonely Christmas,” “Fear,” and a driving performance of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

The holidays are in full swing, and a lyric in “Sandia Crest” ensnares these complicated strands of her emotional state. “I hope to someday love Christmas,” she sings, the phrase nearly swallowing her whole. It’s hopeful but doesn’t skirt the pain.

In our conversation, she admits to feeling like “I am doing a great job of forcing myself to get over wanting to cry every time I heard a Christmas song. While it was all happening, that first holiday season, literally hearing any Christmas song made me feel this pain in my stomach, a sadness like everything that was gone would never be again — that sort of thing. I think I’ve done a good job of reminding myself all of what I love about this time of year and the magic I’m still working on.”

Raised Catholic, Kladzyk doesn’t gravitate to the religious iconography or gift-giving aspects of the season. Rather, it’s about “believing in impossible things or believing in mysterious, beyond the realm of the material things in some ways. It’s been more like smelling pine in the air and the winter experience. It has always held this magic for me.”

Unsubtle Magic is Kladzyk’s lifeline. It’s a fearless, imposing, and visceral snapshot of her life in the throes of inevitable tragedy. It’s not the sort of record you’d expect in the Christmas season, but it’s one with unfortunate universal appeal — and one the entire world needs to witness.

Follow Ziemba on Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Beatrice Deer Weaves Together Traditional and Contemporary Sounds on New LP Shifting

Photo Credit: Alexi Hobbs

“Sunauvva,” from Beatrice Deer’s latest album, Shifting, is a joyous indie pop song with layered production that gives it a psychedelic feel. “That song, I wanted it to have that sense of happiness and I think that it really came through because it’s a song that I want to dance to,” says Deer by phone from her home in Montreal. 

The singer offers a translation of the lyrics, which are sung in Inuktitut, an Inuit language. “If you would have told me back then that I would be happy, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you would have told me that I would forgive, I wouldn’t have believed you,” she shares. The song’s big reveal, though, is that the singer did find happiness. “That’s the meaning of the song. I feel the music really reflects that,” says Deer. 

Shifting is the sixth album from Deer, a multiple award-winning singer and songwriter who incorporates Inuit throat singing into songs that she sings in Inuktitut, English and French. It’s an album that was recorded in the midst of the pandemic. “That was kind of a blessing in disguise because it allowed us to stay put in Montreal and focus on producing the album,” says Deer. “In normal circumstances, all the band members are busy and traveling because they’re in other bands.” 

Since touring was off-calendar, though, it allowed for more time to be spent on the production of Shifting. Mark “Bucky” Wheaton, who plays drums for Deer, and guitarist Chris McCarron handled the production duties at their Montreal studio (they’re both longtime members of Lizzie Powell’s Land of Talk project). While some collaborators recorded their parts at home, Deer and a few other other players were able to record in-person, at the studio, in separate sessions. “Normally, we would all be in the studio at the same time,” she says. 

The extra time, she adds, gave Wheaton an opportunity to experiment more with the production. “The album is different than our other albums because of that. It gave him a lot of freedom to explore,” she says. 

“Sunauvva” is an example of that experimentation. “I write really basic stuff and then the band, Chris and Bucky, were also arranging the songs as we were recording. They came up with the arrangement,” says Deer. “I don’t know what magic Bucky pulled, but he really changed the sound and it just came out that way.”

There was also some experimentation in writing the songs. “Mother,” as it appears on the album, is based on lyrics that Deer wrote in Inuktitut. She asked her friend Kathia Rock to adapt it into French. “It’s not a literal translation,” she says. “It’s a version in French.” 

Deer was also pregnant while working on the album. Her baby is now five-and-a-half months old. “I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and rehearsing and I really had no idea that it was going to be this much work with a newborn and releasing an album,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve been juggling a lot of things.”

Deer and her band began playing live again in the fall. Their first performance was at El Mocambo in Toronto last October. “You have a nervousness. The COVID nervousness— am I too close?” she says. “It’s a different kind of stress. But the musicians in my band are so professional and they impress me above and beyond every time.”

Deer continues, “When we rehearse, we’re used to playing with each other, so it’s not any different, but it’s weird playing in front of an audience, after two years of being in the pandemic now.”

On Shifting, Deer and her bandmates seamlessly meld a variety of sounds from the traditional to the contemporary. An example is “Aanngiq,” which is a traditional Inuit song that they reimagined with drone and guitar sounds that swell during the course of the song. “It’s very modern,” says Deer. “Bucky really played around with that one and it turned out great.”

“The traditional version is just a cappella,” Deer explains. “Traditional songs don’t necessarily have a linear storyline. Sometimes, they’re random words and then, all of a sudden, there’s a sentence that means something.”

For Deer, who is of Inuk and Mohawk heritage, traditional Inuit songs and stories are a part of her upbringing. “As soon as Inuit children go to school, they start learning traditional songs. It’s part of school, it’s part of the curriculum,” she says, adding that “Aanngiq” is a song that she learned as a child. “I like to include traditional songs just to keep them alive and promote the language and promote culture.”

Deer notes that storytelling and singing is an important part of Inuit culture and that has been and impact on her work as a singer and songwriter. She says, “It’s my form of continuing that practice.” 

Follow Beatrice Deer on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Wrestling with “Sad Girl Indie” and the Limits of Rawness

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Earlier this year, in a March listening party following the release of her acclaimed third album Little Oblivions, Julien Baker sat down with NPR columnist and host Jewly Hight and Mackenzie Scott (who performs as Torres). Their conversation revealed an uncomfortable undercurrent of the way today’s booming female indie musicians are framed in popular media: the ever-present discourse of “rawness” and emotion that accompanies critical reception of their work.

“Sure, call it ‘raw’ because it was totally spontaneous,” Torres remarked sarcastically; the term hardly applies to Little Oblivions, Baker’s first release with a full studio band and released after a lengthy reckoning with her creative persona. “It’s just a journal entry. Right.”

Hight describes this “raw” characterization as a misplaced focus on “purging as opposed to craft,” and once identified, it’s easy to see how often that lens is focused on the performers who comprise the loose umbrella of contemporary “sad girl indie.” The term “raw” has not only been used for Phoebe Bridgers’ debut Stranger in the Alps, but also her 2020 release Punisher, which was praised by NME for its sonic experimentation and Stereogum for its “biting, hilarious” lyrics. It’s been bounced around to describe Lucy Dacus’ Home Video, featuring “Thumbs,” a track so layered and personal that Dacus spent years refining and reconsidering it in live show performances that she asked audience members not to record. Last month, she released another version of the song, too, with additional instrumentation.

“Raw” is an odd term for the intimate, candid work of these musicians. It implies a certain undoneness, a lack of artistic focus resulting from ecstatic emotional clarity. It also connotes an ancient, patriarchal idea that art created by women is taken directly from personal experience, rather than the filtration of creative vision and process. Conor Oberst, for instance, a longtime influence and current frequent collaborator of Phoebe Bridgers, has largely escaped seeing his music called “raw” — except when he’s specifically sought it out. 

“When people hear ‘sad boy music,’ they don’t assume it’s a heartbreak,” Audrey Neri, who releases music as Cherry Flavor, points out in Marissa Matozzo’s zine Sad Girl Indie: The Genre’s Relevance in 2021. In contrast to “rawness,” men like Oberst, Christian Lee Hutson, and King Krule – who create music on the same emo-folk-indie pop spectrum that “sad girl indie” comprises – are seen as philosophical troubadours, engaging with emotion on an abstract level. Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier, who lays claim as Christine and the Queens to unabashed, public female sadness in “People, I’ve Been Sad,” put it this way in a recent conversation with Crack magazine: “even in art, women are refused the apersonal.”

Linked to “raw,” the term “sad girl indie” occupies a complicated gendered space in contemporary pop culture. It’s been cited as a space of solace by New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, and claimed as a moniker of feminist community and genre by fans and certain artists. But it’s also been lambasted by Dacus, who doesn’t even consider most of her songs to be sad — as well as Bridgers and Baker, her fellow members of supergroup boygenius, who joined forces after being relentlessly pigeonholed and compared to each other as members of the “sad girl” set. These recent criticisms have led some to argue for abolishing the categorization altogether.

The question of who gets to be in the “sad girl” club has also been raised. Though sad girl indie has been praised for its queer narratives, transfemme musicians like Ezra Furman and Ethel Cain are rarely included in the conversation, to say nothing of the “girl” moniker’s implicit exclusion of nonbinary musicians. Discussions of Black and Indigenous artists like Arlo Parks, FKA Twigs, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and Indigo de Souza are also rare, though de Souza recently offered a compelling perspective on “sad girl indie” hagiography in the Michigan Daily podcast Arts, Interrupted. As TN2 Magazine points out, the women of color who are included under the “sad girl indie” umbrella (typically Mitski, Jay Som, and Japanese Breakfast) have been tokenized and ascribed troublingly-racialized descriptions like “feral,” in addition to the old standby of “raw.”

Of course, effusive emotion has always been a double-edged sword for women in the public eye, dating back to Victorian diagnoses of hystericalism, or even the dismissal of medieval “madwoman” mystic Margery Kempe for her public, psychosexual devotion. Reclaiming this patriarchal notion and finding strength in intense, uncomfortable vulnerability has been a hallmark not only of contemporary “sad girl”-ism, but also the musical forebears who influenced it. 

Take Joni Mitchell for instance, who Brandi Carlile recalls dismissing for being “too soft” before listening to Blue at the behest of her wife, which forced her to “reconsider what ‘tough’ is.” Proto-“sad girls” like Mitchell, Joan Armatrading, and those that followed in the ‘90s feminist punk and singer-songwriter scenes used the aesthetics of emotion to construct artistic spaces in a world that refused to listen to them, giving voice to complex narratives ranging from unwanted pregnancy to systemic poverty, environmental anxiety, and queer desire. This is echoed in today’s “sad girls,” whose music reckons explicitly with abuse, addiction, and mental health concerns.

The potential strength of sad girl indie, however, is diluted by the critical presumption that its artists’ songs are “raw,” unprocessed “journal entries,” rather than artistic acts of ownership and cultivation. It’s also vastly diminished by the exclusion of trans and BIPOC artists, for whom the reclamation of the complicated, ruminative emotions so key to the subgenre’s success is even more urgent. 

There may be hope for “sad girl indie,” if it can escape the “raw” paradigm and be considered expansively as a springboard for artistic community. At the very least, moving on from “sad girl indie” may offer a chance for something new to rise from its ashes: an evolved understanding of the queer and feminist undercurrents of today’s musical landscape, one that appreciates the complexity and artistry of its performers outright.

Liz Stringer Gets Accustomed To Her First Time Really Feeling

Photo Credit: Kristoffer Paulsen

Let’s time warp back to April, back when it was just over a year of lockdowns, restrictions, fear (and loathing), and a sense of exhaustion reigned globally. It was glum, in short. But in the bleakness, Liz Stringer released her sixth album, First Time Really Feeling. On it, she revealed the newfound sobriety that it took until her late 30s to embrace. It is a confessional album, her most honest to date by her own admission in multiple interviews. The country, rockin’ folk vibe sonically is warm and lush and the straight-talking lyrics are unvarnished and untarnished by a haze of alcohol and hangovers. It marked two years since she’d been feted at Woodford Folk Festival in 2019 by fellow performers Catherine MacLellan, Tim Levinson, Jessie Lloyd and Jeff Lang, who paid tribute to her catalogue to date by covering their favourite Stringer songs.

In October the same year, Stringer joined fellow musos Jen Cloher and Mia Dyson for the second time since releasing a 2013 tour EP to record their debut Dyson Stringer Cloher LP. The album was a celebration of some of Melbourne’s finest songwriters, voices and guitar talent, though Stringer had moved to Toronto a year earlier to avoid the party scene she’d become prey to in Melbourne. As she told Conor Lochrie at Tone Deaf: “For me there was a lot of grief in getting sober, against all the amazing stuff. There was a period of having to mourn my life that I had been living for around 20 years. That was a big reason why I left and moved to Canada in 2018 because I couldn’t be around here, it was too triggering. Everywhere I went I remembered getting shitfaced there or hanging out there or going to the party there. It was constant!”

Melbourne has welcomed her back with open arms, though – her album received praise widely in media and she’s got tours booked through the end of 2021 and early 2022. She had been touring with Dyson and Cloher in 2019 until the borders closed and she found herself inadvertently but willingly back home.

Stringer’s sisterhood of songwriters did not begin and end with Dyson and Cloher. In 2008, she’d been invited by the esteemed singer-songwriter Deborah Conway to take part in the Broad Festival project. The Australia-wide tour was a vehicle for Stringer, Laura Jean, Dianna Corcoran and Elana Stone to perform their own work and reinterpret each other’s songs on stage. It has never been lost on her industry cohorts that in Stringer, the strength of her songwriting and performing – travelling the country-roots-folk route – are a phenomenon and have been since Soon, her 2006 debut. That was followed by Pendulum in 2008, Tides of Time in 2010, Warm in the Darkness in 2012, Live at the Yarra in 2014, and All the Bridges in 2016.

It was fortuitous and fitting that Cloher’s Milk! Records (founded with Courtney Barnett) signed Stringer in February, merely two months before she dropped First Time Really Feeling – easily her most raw, real album to date. The album, as much as it is about Melbourne and the weight of addiction on her mind and body, was recorded in Toronto in 2018.

“When I made the record, it took so long to bring out, because I didn’t have anyone,” she told Lochrie. “I was totally on my own, I had no money, I was in Toronto working as a session musician. And I just knew instinctively that either I put this album out well or I just don’t. I thought maybe that’s it, maybe I’m done. Then ironically during the pandemic it came together.”

First Time Really Feeling had to arrive when it arrived, which sounds obvious, but really – it is nigh on impossible to dig into the hurt, the grief, the true depths you’ve plunged into as an addict when you are still an addict. Stringer did not make the album all about herself though. As with her prior work, her songs are the collected stories of creatives who have nurtured their craft in ways that are self-destructive, no matter how necessary they feel at the time.

The title track is a percussive, country-inflected ballad in which Stringer’s earthy, plaintive storytelling comes to the front. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!” she croons early on. Later: “It feels like I’m always leaving, and love, it ain’t a conscious thing/My body is still reeling/The fear of losing everything/When it’s the first time you’re really feeling.”

On “Metrologist,” she channels the Liz Stringer of old: propping up the bar. “I’ve never seen you here before, have you got time for just one more?” is her opening line to the metrologist she meets. An expert in measurement, her newfound friend prompts her to consider the distance between her bar stool and the table, the weight of alcohol, and inevitably the lyrics get darker and the mood more threatening as she begins to probe deeper into weights and worthiness.

“Can you tell me how long before I disappear? What’s the point look like at which I am no longer here? If my body’s too heavy and my list’s too long, have I failed as a woman ’cause my measurements are wrong?”

Then: “What’s the unit for the negative shit in my head that only drowns when I down a solid litre before bed?”

Her voice is a sturdy, weathered, rootsy creature that is delivered in a defiant, captivating, shamelessly Australian accent. There’s a reckless, almost breathless urgency to her realisations that being a woman musician might not measure up to much that is crushing to listen to, let alone to write – I imagine.

On “Victoria”, she sums up the juxtaposing love-and-fear relationship she maintains with the state she has lived most of her adult life in. “Bluestone lane, brick wall and gutter/Every house I got fucked up in ’til they all looked like any other/Informs it all since I could crawl/You taught me all I know, Victoria, Victoria.”

For the most part, tracks are pared back to rocksy, rootsy guitar, vocals and a steady, complementary drum. If it needed to be classified, it wouldn’t be astray in the Alt-Country box. There’s something of the dramatic, frank delivery of Brandi Carlisle and the deep, soul-moving realness of Linda Perry’s voice in Stringer’s sound.  

The thrum of guitars creates waves upon which Stringer lands her serene, resolute ode to “Little Fears, Little Loves.” It’s anthemic, without trumpeting its arrival. “When we see who we are/Every secret, every scar/It’s only that moment that we’ll feel love,” comes the rousing, poignant and subtly sentimental message.

Like love, like addiction, like finding a sense of home, this album is the eye of the storm: the peaceful calm within the noise of living. Find your own solace with Stringer’s voice, so close to you, and really feel it.

Follow Liz Stringer on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Jess Dye of High Waisted Explores “Shame” with Video Premiere for Solo Project Hello Lightfoot

Photo Credit: Michael Todaro

The complex emotion of shame, often unconscious or ignored, happens when cultural norms are violated or reckoned with. There’s a flipside too – the emotional aftermath of rebelling against societal expectations sometimes feels so good. Shame can be exhilarating and lead to us on the journey of life’s greatest lessons, while acting as a vehicle for the kind of catharsis needed to alchemize powerful music.

Jessica Louise Dye of High Waisted explores these varying reactions on her sophomore single “Shame,” released under the moniker Hello Lightfoot, a solo project that’s been nearly a decade in the making, Originally composed of down-tempo folk songs, Dye sidesteps the DIY surf rock chaos of High Waisted altogether to begin releasing intricate, industrial-tinged baroque pop songs. With a noir twist, the lyrics of “Shame” roll off the tongue like medieval riddles on a surrealist intergalactic quest. 

“I used a fun poetry method of blacking out lines in an old book to help start my story for lyrics.” Dye tells Audiofemme. “Being forced to work in a thematic box really drove the direction of the song and inspired a dark subject matter. Soundscape wise, Kyle McCammon [a.k.a. PLUS], who produced this track, was able to bring a huge gritty, driving, pulsating to the instrumentation. I love the contrast from intense bass and guitar to light, eerie samples. I think we were able to embody the complexity of what the emotion shame would sound like in the form of a modern song.”

A glitchy montage of found footage and saturated visuals, the music video, premiering today via Audiofemme, follows Dye in an alternate digital reality. She wanders through an urban dream sequence, bleeding into images of a younger self, distorted by digital audio sound waves. Dye dances on rooftops against the New York skyline, the subway her stage, as she commands the camera clad in a mod checkered jumpsuit. Through flashing images of ultrasound clips, the video embodies the evolution of self, and loss of innocence. The chorus rings out with undertones of melodic anxiety. Fast cuts embody a restless night of sleep, subconscious pressures and repressed emotion bubbling up to surface. Disguising her eyes under thick black sunglasses, Dye remains unaffected and dignified in the motion and stance of a 1980s aerobics junkie. A lady of the night, she embraces her shame, and praises the wisdom granted through her learned experience.

A self-proclaimed extrovert, Dye dives into the deeper complex lyrical meaning behind “Shame.” The song is meant to empower, and take back control over the crippling emotion, a feeling we associate with rejection, isolation, and the inability to experience or feel worthy of love. The song exists as an anthem for moving through the emotion, embracing rather than repressing shame. Society expects one to make a mistake and never repeat it, but we all know inner human programming doesn’t flip off like a light switch. Dye coos and delivers a cunning take on empowerment of our flaws and the wisdom we gain by living recklessly and making what society may deem as “mistakes.”

“Sometimes this shameful thing I’m doing becomes heightened and also enhanced by knowing it’s shameful. Self- awareness triggers pleasure, which is sort of naughty. The chorus of ‘Shame,’ it’s my inner voice saying, “you should not be doing this, but you are, and you enjoy it more because it’s wrong,” says Dye, recognizing that the most erotic love often presents itself within complex and debaucherous interpersonal dynamics.

Written when Dye was in her mid-twenties, “Shame” was not initially heavy or drenched with grit. Instead, Dye leaned into an operatic delivery, an almost religious performance coming to terms with her demons as a vehicle for creation. “It’s almost like you’re in church, surrounded by people praying and praising shame, as if it’s passed down on you. The guitars, the melodies, explain my complex relationship to the feeling,” she says. “Having to revisit these lyrics, and go through journal entries I began to figure out what was actually going on in the undertone of my experience. ‘Muzzle be damned’ is a reference to silencing your own opinions around others as a means to be more amicable. It’s very easy to lose yourself if you’re constantly catering to the likes and dislikes of other people.”

“‘Secure your namesake/Embellish to reclaim/What you choose to ignore will tear you apart’ are my favorite lyrics in the song,” she adds. “I don’t really think I realized how powerful it was until looking back at it ten years later.”

Dye describes the resurrection of these songs, now fully actualized for her current project, as a form of spell casting through writing notes to her future self. “I think in this sense, I was expressing the self awareness of the damage I was potentially doing, living recklessly in my 20s,” she admits. “Drugs are one thing, but hurting people feels like the real crime, whether it’s emotionally or physically. I think I definitely did a lot of emotional damage to people in that period of my life. Essentially a lot of people met a much different version of who I am today.”

“The hope is that one continues to change and grow, but I don’t think everybody does. Some people get stagnant, in a stage of arrested development, stuck at a certain stage,” she continues. “I think that’s why I chose to revisit these songs and reinterpret the meaning in context of the person I’ve grown to become.” 

It’s the little things, whether you’re dissecting a relationship, or looking inward, the micro glitches that you choose to ignore, or give permission to stay, that start to add up. Whether it’s excuses for bad behavior, patterns of negative thinking, or self destructive tendencies, often (and hopefully) this programming will one day implode and come to a breaking point. This inevitably becomes a catalyst for self discovery, change, and personal growth. As our culture evolves by holding space for difficult conversations surrounding mental health, shame, and creating new boundaries and formats for interpersonal, romantic, and sexual relationships, songs like “Shame” move the needle forward. Difficult emotions never live in black or white territory – rather a monochromatic spectrum of grey tone. 

As a rockstar, lyricist, empath, and community organizer, Dye continues to throw iconic downtown happenings like Home Sweet Home’s Femme Fatale, and create and share new multi-faceted introspective alternative music. As she steps into her next chapter, Dye explains, “I think I’ve made progress by not giving so much power to pleasing people who feel undeserving. That’s the trick – investing in the right relationships. I think without even knowing exactly what I’m ashamed of, the actual music, the guitars, the melody, explain it.” 

Follow Hello Lightfoot on Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Jane Honor Captures the Weirdness of COVID Relationships with “Melt”

The pandemic changed what it means to be in a relationship, with many couples facing the decision between basically breaking up or living together. Some people rushed into relationships for companionship, and other relationships that seemed meant to be never materialized. LA-based indie pop artist Jane Honor meditates on the strange turn dating took during COVID times in her latest single – the dark, moody “Melt.”

Honor wrote the song about starting a new relationship in the “apocalyptic world” of early 2021. She remembers being inside a vortex with this person, disconnected from the rest of the world and each other’s worlds as well.

“I don’t think you get the full view of a person when you’re not completely immersed in their life and sharing that, because that’s what relationships are all about — and so without that connection to their life, you just have this fantasy world,” she says. “After COVID, we led very different lifestyles in that we just really didn’t mesh with each other’s friends well, and it just started to fall apart out of isolation.”

The song starts off with heavy guitar and bass sounds and somber rock vocals painting a picture of a hauntingly enclosed space: “Melt into the bed with me/Feel the fluff between our feet/Breathe in noises of the street/Baby, are you scared of me?” These verses escalate into a surprisingly refreshing, breezy chorus, giving off an impression of stepping outside after a long period of isolation: “Yellow light in our eyes/Do you think we’ll be the same?”

Honor writes the skeletons of all her songs on the piano, and for this one, she worked with bassist Jed Elliott of The Struts, who produced the single as well as played on it. Reverb, vocoder, and vocal effects give it a familiar indie rock sound, and they used “really intricate, not-as-pleasing-sounding harmonies to build the tension of the song,” says Honor.

“I knew I wanted it to be a big production, a big song. So I just really went into it, and I didn’t care if it was extra or too much, and I made it really cinematic,” she explains. “Some of the feedback has been that it wasn’t too articulated or enunciated, but that’s the point — that it’s supposed to be kind of wishy-washy and misunderstood and sounding underwater a little bit, because jumping into something so scary during the pandemic kind of feels like you’re drowning.”

Writing this song — and songwriting in general — has been a way for Honor to deal with feelings of fear and hopelessness during the pandemic, and she hopes the song can help normalize these feelings for others experiencing them. “I hope that listeners take away that it’s okay to feel scared in relationships and to feel scared in life,” she says.

Honor is only 20 years old but has been singing and writing music since she was eight, beginning mostly with musical theater and going on to perform in venues like the Apollo Theater in New York. She’s currently a student at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and has released four other singles beginning last year.

Throughout her body of work, Honor’s deep, rich, full-bodied voice makes her stand out, from the 80s-inspired “There Won’t Be Any Music” — an account of a tumultuous relationship with another musician — to her first single, the percussion-driven “Deer in the Road,” where she sings operatically about moving on after a breakup. “Green” contains similarly theatrical vocals and piano and she sings about retaining the positive memories of a fraught relationship.

Her last single, the folky “Sunset to London,” was co-written with producer Matty Carlock about her first solo trip around Europe. “We pulled from my experience of going to London and added a lot of fictional aspects and storylines that were fun to create,” she remembers.

She’s compiled these songs and others into an album dubbed Spiraling in Central Park, set for release next spring, which deals with mental health, addiction, and “sticking to yourself and who you are,” she says. “I think the overall theme is just growing up, and maybe growing up too fast.”

Inspired by artists like Regina Spektor, Maggie Rogers, and Phoebe Bridges, Honor hopes to get more involved in the production and engineering side of music as well as singing and songwriting as her career develops. When she’s not making music, she explores other art forms like drawing, painting, and writing.

Despite the weirdness of pandemic life for her, she’s also seen it bring some positive things to her relationships and relationships in general. “I think that we don’t take people for granted as much,” she says. “I know I hold my friends a lot closer because there’s always a thought that they could be ripped away from us again for a year and a half or a few years. That’s a really scary thought, so I definitely value my friendships a lot more. People have just been a little bit kinder and more understanding through the whole pandemic.”

Follow Jane Honor on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Bren Joy and Jake Wesley Rogers Step Out of Creative Comfort Zones For Red Bull SoundClash

Photo credit: Se Oh / Lamont Roberson

Nashville is called Music City for a reason. From the country music capital of the world to the home of the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers, Nashville is brimming with creative talent. Red Bull is working to elevate that creativity with SoundClash, its long-running event that sees two artists face off in a musical competition where the winner is decided by the audience. The artists entering the musical octagon must be willing to step outside of their creative comfort zones and adapt to new situations. Willing to step up to that challenge are two of Nashville’s rising stars: Bren Joy and Jake Wesley Rogers, who will take over Marathon Music Works on December 9 at 9pm EST.

Bren Joy, an R&B artist influenced by ’70s Motown and California culture, has credits that include writing “Dynasties & Dystopia” for Netflix’s hit animated series Arcane: League of Legends and opening for Megan Thee Stallion; Jake Wesley Rogers, a former America’s Got Talent contestant turned glam pop artist was featured on the Happiest Season soundtrack and has made fans in Hollywood ranging from Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds to Madonna and Elton John. 

“I love companies that really invest in upcoming artists. That’s very important for me,” Joy shares with Audiofemme about what drew him to SoundClash. “I intentionally wrote these songs in a way that I can flip them and interchange them. I want to show people versatility.”

“It’s also a fun creative challenge too because it’s so different than a normal show,” observes Rogers. “I do like a challenge. I do like to be put out of my comfort zone because I think that’s when interesting things happen and this feels like a good way to do that.”

Part of that challenge stems from the fact that the artists are tasked not only with reimagining their own songs, but working together on performing collaborative renditions of each other’s music, along with a cover song.

Rogers says he worked closely with his music director to reinvent his sound for the occasion, adding a barbershop quartet to an a cappella version of one of his songs, with Joy teasing a “big surprise” for his performance of “Insecure,” his collaboration with R&B-soul singer Pink Sweat$, and even took himself by surprise with his new rendition of “Twenties,” the title track of his 2019 EP. He also hints at a special appearance by a female artist whose 2020 album he’s been listening to “nonstop,” teasing that they’re sharing a “beautiful moment onstage.”  

”My music’s very special to me and it’s very close to my heart, so I think it’s going to be good for me hearing different versions of my music that I write. I’m very intrigued and I’m very excited for that. It’s a very unique opportunity,” Joy expresses, adding, “there’s so many surprises.”

As a Nashville native, this opportunity is especially meaningful for Joy, who asserts that he’s going to stick to his roots and “follow my gut” in presenting his music as an example of the diverse talent born and bred in Music City. “I’m so stoked for the opportunity to do something special in my city. Nashville’s very important to me and live music is a very special part of the city’s culture and I think whenever we can take live music and go a step further and really push the envelope and push the norm, that’s what I want to do,” he asserts. “It means a lot being able to do something like this that’s very original that I don’t know if I’d get another chance to do.”

Meanwhile, Rogers plans to take what he’s learned performing other live shows, going back to his theatre days growing up in Missouri and singing in a rock band in church. There, he learned about the value of transitions in maintaining the natural flow of the songs, skills he intends on channeling on the SoundClash stage. “You have to serve the moment and the live environment, what is going to serve this show and what is going to sound the best, feel the best, look the best,” Rogers describes of his approach, hinting that he’s had several new costumes made for the show, draped in sparkles and sequins. “I feel the most me when I’m performing. There is something so different about performing live when it’s a very intimate connection with people and it feels so cathartic.”

And while they’re poised to be competitors, Joy and Rogers are approaching it with a healthy mindset. Having met as students at Belmont University in Nashville, the two artists were already familiar with each other’s music coming into the competition, offering nothing but praise for one another’s gifts.

“Our styles are quite different, but I think we’re both inspired by each other, so that’s helpful,” Rogers laughs, citing Joy as a “sweetheart” and “stupid talented.” He adds, “It’s nice to talk to someone that gets it and understands how fun and wild this career is.”

For Joy, SoundClash has allowed him to connect with an artist whose style is vastly different from his own, the common ground allowing them to build a unique sense of trust needed to perform in such an event. “I love Jake, I love his music, and I think what’s important that people don’t realize in a SoundClash is trust. These songs are very vulnerable and special to me, so I have to really trust the other artist. I trust Jake to do my songs justice and also to be sensitive to the topics,” Joy remarks, calling Rogers “visually stunning.” “It’s definitely been interesting trying to keep the same motive and intention that Jake had in the song and be respectful, but also give it different legs. It’s been really cool.” 

Part of building that trust is understanding who one another is as an artist. Rogers, who identifies as gender-fluid, is intentional about telling his story in a genuine way. Deeply observant, Rogers harbors a unique ability to capture the “friction of life,” pointing to the song “Pluto” as a metaphor for how many people feel like outsiders, and our lifelong quest to find love.

“Anytime anyone is able to be themselves, it inspires somebody else to be themselves, and that’s really important to me. My mission as an artist is to find freedom in myself and talk about it and hopefully some other people find it too,” says Rogers.

As for Joy, he reveals that 2020 allowed him to view life through a new lens, learning more about who he is at the core and leaning into it, that personal growth shining through “fully” in his music. “I think over the past year, I’ve fell so much deeper in love with my culture and my background and I have stood up for things in the past that I had been quiet about. I think that I’ve learned to be a badass, give no fucks,” he professes. “I feel like that’s where I really had this disconnect with my art in the past; I was coming from a very insecure place. I feel like now I’ve grown in my art and grown to love what I do and to stop caring so much about what people are going to think or what’s going to happen and really trust in my taste and the taste of the people that listen to my music. I feel like I’ve grown up. I’m a little more open, everything’s a little more queer, everything’s a little more cool. I feel like I am very zen at the moment.” 

While the two singers have differing perspectives on how they want the audience to perceive them, the common thread is to feel a sense of connection and community. Rogers hopes fans feel the wonder of escapism in his presentation, while Joy encourages people see the vast range his music has to offer. “I hope they take away my versatility. I think versatility is something that’s very important to me and I have grown so much. I think we all have grown over the past year, we’ve all learned a lot, we’ve all been educated, so I am very excited for people to hopefully take away not only my versatility, but my ability to write songs,” Joy declares.

“I hope that they forget about their life for a minute and forget about their brain. Music is one of the most magical things in this world and I hope that’s a moment. I hope it’s cathartic. I hope it’s surprising,” Rogers reflects with a smile. “I hope they see themselves in me.”

Follow Jake Wesley Rogers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook , and Bren Joy on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for ongoing updates. 

Composer Uèle Lamore Fans the Flames of Mass Appeal with “Breathe” Video

Photo Credit: Antoine Vincens de Tapol

On her full-length debut LOOM, Franco-American producer/composer Uèle Lamore tells a story that is actually as old as time; in eleven tracks, she charts a loose history of the primordial beginnings of life on Earth. Echoey percussion, enigmatic synth and spidery guitar kick things off on previous single “The Dark,” while spoken word by Parisian poet Gracy Hopkins narrates the potential evolution of humanity over aching strings on “The First Tree.” While the album, set for a January 28th release via experimental Sony Music imprint XXIM Records, is certainly cinematic, it’s never too dense or arcane.

“I just wanted to put together a record that I thought would be super fun to play live with an electro-rock band, with guitars and bass. And also I thought that it would be good to try to make a record that everybody understands but offers something different to everybody,” Lamore tells Audiofemme. “If you come from hip hop there are things you understand, but you discover some elements that come more from electronic; if you prefer neoclassical or ambient there are some tracks you’re going to like and I’m going to show you stuff that comes from rock. I wanted to craft sounds that would be interesting but accessible and enjoyable for most people. It’s a record for people that like music, basically.”

In fact, Lamore’s next single, “Breathe,” was directly inspired by skateboarding and indie pop icons like Phoenix and Air. “I was near a skate spot in Paris, doing some field recording – I do my own field recordings to insert into tracks,” Lamore says. “When I was recording them I was like, man, it would be so cool to do this track with guitars and everything. I was really thinking about Phoenix; I really wanted to be super ‘French touch’ about it. I only had the backbone of the track and I composed it thinking about that and putting the sounds of the skaters inside it. I just wanted something really fun and upbeat to contrast with other tracks on the record.”

The video, directed by Yannick Demaison and Alexis Magand of Biscuit Productions, takes these seeds of inspiration and sets fire to them – literally. Premiering today via Audiofemme, the black and white clip compiles stirring images of a girl gang of skaters (played by Camille Fleurence, Océane Pasquet, Joana Dumoulin, Tiffaine Voisin, Emmy Jardoux, and Elissa Karami) kick-flipping across a skatepark with their decks consumed by flames.

Lamore says she used to skate herself, but another hobby took precedence: music. Picking up an acoustic when she was only nine, she quickly moved on to electric guitar and then, via YouTube videos and how-to magazines, began teaching herself production techniques and how to make beats in middle and high school. She left France to study guitar at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, then earned a degree in composition and conducting from Berklee College of Music in 2016, and since 2019 has been an associate conductor, orchestrator and arranger with the London Contemporary Orchestra. Her debut EP TRACKS, released in 2020, was inspired by train travel across Europe and Japan, some of the songs even named for specific locations, all of them imbued with a sense of romance and movement.

Forward momentum is intrinsic to the way Lamore builds her compositions. “I need to know where the song is going, from Point A to Point Z. So I sketch out the whole melody from the beginning to the end basically,” she says of the process. “Then I pay a lot of attention to sound design – that’s an aspect that’s often overlooked in production, all these little sounds that don’t have any importance but really add a universe to your song.” That’s where her field recordings – of skaters, birds, church bells, crowds, and more – come into play, adding richness and context into each of the songs.

With such dramatic world-building, it’s not surprising that Lamore also composes music for film (she just finished working on the soundtrack for a forthcoming British movie about young cannibal women with discerning tastes). But whether she’s composing for films or for her own albums, Lamore says she always has a visual in mind.

“One of the most vivid memories that I have, that made me want to do music, is that I was lucky to experience MTV when they still played a lot of these crazy music videos in the 2000s, where the budget was probably insane, with helicopters and real stories happening,” she explains. “That’s how I digested music at first, so I think that for me it has always been connected with the idea of telling a story and the very visual aspects of that, because I discovered music through music videos. For me, it’s super important to tell a story, and try to paint something, with sound. I don’t think I can do it any other way basically – it’s kind of hard for me to do super abstract stuff.”

Still, LOOM started out with an entirely different concept behind it, and a lofty one at that. Upon returning to Europe after college, Lamore said she had time on her hands and wanted to make a succession of “super nerdy” songs about “complex stuff… ecosystems and molecules and bacterias.” There was no plan to release it as an album, really. In the meantime, she made connections and collaborated with musicians like Moor Mother, Alfa Mist, Max Cooper, Etienne Daho, Silly Boy Blue, Drum & Lace, Yan Wagner, and more. But after signing her record deal, she revisited those demos.

“I was like, waaaahhh man, I hate this! It sucks so bad!” she recalls with a laugh. Lamore didn’t despair or start from scratch; she began re-working the material track by track without trying to communicate the scientific narrative, but kept things in the same order for continuity’s sake.

“The title of each track became kind of like a metaphor. ‘The Dark’ can be something that happened in your life and ‘Breathe’ can be a kind of feeling that you can have. They all become mirrors that everybody can relate to,” Lamore explains. “I purposefully didn’t want to give a true symbolic [meaning] to everything because I want it to become everybody’s personal object and interpret it the way they want.”

To make the songs even more accessible, Lamore took a cue from landmark 1998 Massive Attack album Mezzanine, which featured guest vocalists Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins, Horace Andy, and Sarah Jay. “There needed to be vocal tracks [on LOOM] because it’s the easiest way for most people to digest music,” she says simply. “I had this list of people that I knew from different projects or from word of mouth or I had seen them perform live, and I always kept in the beck of my mind that I would love to do something with them.” Besides Hopkins, these include the honeyed vocals of UK singer Cherise on hypnotic cut “Pollen,” a wistful Ana Benabdelkarim (a.k.a. Silly Boy Blue) on atmospheric album closer “Warmblood,” and her own manipulated vocal on “Currents.”

With the band she’s assembled, Lamore should have no trouble translating these kinetic, mesmerizing tracks on tour, even if they have to get creative with vocal features and samples. It’s how she originally envisioned sharing them, after all. Japanese video and performance artist Akiko Nakayama, who directed “The Dark” video, has created visuals for the show.

While LOOM positions Uèle Lamore as a genre-defying producer well worth keeping an eye on, she still has humbling moments. Recently, she attempted to show a young skateboarder some of her old tricks. “I had forgotten that I hadn’t skated in like ten years right? So I go, ‘Yeah kiddo, this is how you do this, let me show you,’ and I took his board… and I just like completely fall,” she laughs. “Him and his little friends started making fun of me and my friends. My ego just fell in the toilet.”

Follow Uèle Lamore on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Premiere: Mimi Oz Goes Under the Microscope In “Hate” Video

Photo courtesy of artist

Mimi Oz wrote her song “Hate” as a way to deal with conflicting feelings of being an outsider. The Toronto-based singer-songwriter thrives on “being alone,” she says, as a “highly creative” person. With a strong support system, she adds, “I can’t say that loneliness is a regular feeling that I experience.” And yet, when she was living in New York City from 2018-19, pangs of loneliness continuously ripped right through her psyche, inspiring her to write “Hate.” A visual for the track, directed by Dylan Mars Greenberg, premieres today via Audiofemme.

“I was hit hard by a lot of things that were adding up, one of them being that it didn’t matter where I went, I just kind of felt like people didn’t like me,” she tells Audiofemme. “That was a hard truth that wore on my mental health. Not fitting into my community was also part of it, and that was every area of NY that I lived in.”

The song appears on Oz’s third studio record, Growing Pains, released October 22. “All my life, I tried to live outside the hate,” she huffs in almost a dream state, then caterwauls, “I see the hate you feel for me,” as electric guitar intensifies into a rolling boil. Oz reaches her hand through space and time to appeal to our collective sadness and the pressures of modern living and dying. With drums played by Miles Gibbons and guitar from David Celia, Oz conjures up a “perfect hollow space where you can feel the intensity of the lyrics, and everything hits hard and together and pulls you along. There is also a sense of violence, and I wanted to somehow explore that in the video but it didn’t end up turning out that way.”

Instead, the accompanying visual plants Oz smack dab in the middle of a bustling NYC subway. Trains whizz by, and preoccupied people in suits shuffle off to their 9-to-5, desperation hanging in the background like gnawed-up cork board. Within this setting, Oz and Greenberg accentuate the heavy sorrow woven into everyday existence. “It’s true millions of people feel that sadness. I’ve seen a number of people pushed off the edge in New York, mentally,” says Oz. “Sharing my experience and writing music that is relevant is key. If I was living without passion or purpose, that would be a cause for concern.”

Reality-rooted imagery mingles with absurdism like floating heads and oversized eyeballs, a creative idea Greenberg brought to the table to illustrate “the world inside my mind and the real world, the physical world,” Oz explains. “I’m isolated and alone, telling the story with menacing floating heads above me. I think the CGI helps the viewer really clue into the storyline and focus on the lyrics more.”

“Dylan has this really renegade, hands-on approach to film-making that I admire,” she continues. “The original artwork I released for this single was a watercolor that I had painted of a black sheep with a psychedelic coat of fur. I recreated this by tying together bright pieces of scrap fabric into a long boa that I wore across my neck. The character is someone that people don’t understand, but are fascinated with.”

While her journey to acceptance “probably doesn’t matter,” Oz says frankly, the experiences that lead her to write “Hate” have at least given her some perspective. “Life is confusing, so just try to be a good person,” she says. “I think now I care less, and also try to have as much compassion as I can, while also taking care of myself.”

Follow Mimi Oz on Instagram for ongoing updates.

GrandAce Reflects on Midwest Living with “No Beaches in Ohio” Video

GrandAce
GrandAce
Photo Credit: Annie Noelker

GrandAce takes the good with the bad while soaking up some sun for his new video, “No Beaches in Ohio.” With co-director Ciara Cruder, the Cincinnati MC traveled to the beaches at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park in Michigan for the visual, which also features shots of the song’s Australia-based producer, Inigo Magno.

“He sent the beat to me and I did what I always do: I added my own touches,” GrandAce tells Audiofemme. “It really was an active collaboration because we were talking about different ideas, switching out baselines, and doing stuff like that.”

“No Beaches in Ohio” was GrandAce’s first time working with Magno, and since the single was such a collaborative effort, it was important for him to include the producer in the song’s visual. 

“It’s not something I could have made on my own because one, I don’t play guitar, and two, that type of sound isn’t where my head is at,” he adds. “I love working with people who bring their own complete sound like that, and then I was able to come in and add some sparkle. It’s literally our song, because I would’ve approached it completely differently on my own and it wouldn’t have happened without him on there.”

The sing-song-y track, underscored by synths and guitar, finds GrandAce reflecting on his Ohio dwellings, fighting against the comforts of nostalgia, and holding onto his passions. 

“There was a lot of reflection on what it’s like living in the Midwest, and Ohio specifically. Depending on how you’re doing in life, Ohio can be a very bleak place,” he explains. “The winters are hard, the skies are grey. It’s a very melancholy state, which is why everybody likes to rag on it. But because everybody likes to rag on it, it’s actually becoming one of the more popular states to mention.”

GrandAce is quick to point out that there are “certain beauties” to living in Ohio, too. “Things are not as expensive as they could be, which means you can stretch your dollar to more experiences. Partially growing up in Ohio, I have a lot of really fond memories here – hanging out with friends, throwing art shows, going to malls, typical stuff,” he says. But with the simple pleasures comes a caveat: “Nostalgia is the enemy,” GrandAce sings on the track.

“There are beautiful things in the midst of such a bland place, but it’s very easy to get stuck here. It’s very easy to be complacent when you’re in a place like Ohio,” he elaborates. “I’ve met a lot of very cool, talented people who, when I met them, had very big dreams. But life can kind of beat you down, and years later they haven’t thought about what they love or their passions. Some people forget. That’s kind of what I’m trying to avoid because it’s so easy to slip into that mode, and that’s really what the song is about.”

Living by example, GrandAce has had a productive year, releasing a collaborative two-pack with Gladwell, Pad Thai. He also put out his French Vanilla EP and loosies “Granite Countertops” and “Sufficiency,” and has another single, video, and two full projects coming out early next year. “The projects are finished now, but I keep adding to them and tweaking them,” he says. “What they are now might not be what they are later.”

For now, “No Beaches in Ohio” is a great reminder to keep at it, no matter where you are in life. “The song is appreciating the good with the bad and reflecting,” GrandAce says, “but also being aware that reflecting too much can be a bad thing.”

Follow GrandAce on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Lady Lash Pushes Boundaries with Power of the Feminine Divine on Spiritual Misfit LP

Photo Credit: Nicole Woods

As Lady Lash, South Australian artist Crystal Clyne (née Mastosavvas) translates elements of hip hop, R&B, soul, and electro into a language all her own. On her fifth album, Spiritual Misfit (out November 22 via Heavy Machinery Records), she pushes back on the expectations on her as a woman, a mother, and an artist; the sonic mood of the album is a distinct shift from her primarily beats-driven, hip hop roots. “This album, I feel, was in the frequencies of my alien brain, coming from hip hop to this completely other sound. I feel it’s a journey through light and dark worlds, exploring who you are outside of society’s boxes, not being afraid to change and evolve,” she tells Audiofemme.

When she started writing the album, she recalls thinking, “There’s something happening here;” that was nearly two years ago. “I felt like I was moving into this different musical frequency in my brain, and I had to step away from hip hop for a bit. The first song that came out… was ‘Love My Darkness,’ which began as a straight guitar track, very simple.”

Last year, Clyne received funding and creative support from the Victorian Government and City of Melbourne’s joint initiative, Flash Forward, allowing her to transition the songs she’d been working on into an album. Her co-producers, composer and artist Miles Brown and Wiradjuri studio engineer/experimental interdisciplinary artist Naretha Williams, were supportive of Clyne’s intuition that “Love My Darkness” needed more “edge” and more feeling. Brown added the synths and bass to flesh it out, and the result is a full-bodied, immersive tour de force.

The song was the first of nine tracks that pay a creative homage to her psychological and spiritual hurting and healing over the past few years. “Through my life I’ve been in domestic violence relationships and the trauma that sits deep within your liver, your heart, your soul, it was a massive journey for me,” she reveals, now having overcome problematic drinking habits and broken free of damaging relationships. “I’d also given birth to my third child and I felt a massive shift, a massive rebirth and I wanted to be more poetic in the lyrical content, but also understanding myself, because it is therapy when I write. It’s like a diary of my life.”

Lady Lash is no stranger to establishing her own identity through making sense of various languages of speech, song and family. She spent her teenage years on Koonibba mission in South Australia with her family, of both Greek and Indigenous Kokatha descent. These two ancient cultures have at least one obvious cultural commonality: a love for the ocean and an appreciation of it as both a source of life and beauty. Her earliest memories are of playing with her brothers and sisters on her dad’s boat.

Her albums have harked back to the ocean and family, not the least in their titles. Her debut EP Pearl came out in May 2010, followed by Crystal Mercy: The Fisherman’s Daughter in 2013. It honoured her father, whose family migrated from the Greek villages of Siana and Kritinia on the island of Rhodes. Her grandfather, Bapoul George Clyne, was born in Ceduna in South Australia, later becoming a fisherman. Samuel, his son, met and married Theresa Ware, and Crystal is the first of their six children.

It was a far cry from the seaside coast of Adelaide to Melbourne, where she moved in 2009. The hip hop scene in this city is strong and she was a fresh talent, energised and intelligent. When she dropped Pearl in 2010, it drew critical acclaim. She was nominated for a Deadly Award, won Redfern Records‘ “Female of the Year” award, and was invited to perform at the One Movement Festival in Perth. When she released her debut LP, the awards kept coming: a VIPA (Victorian Indigenous Performer Awards) for Most Promising Act of 2013 and a nomination for “Best Indigenous Act” at The Age Music Victoria Awards of 2016.

The references to the natural world made way for the cosmic with second album Milky Way in 2015. From the oceanic to the interplanetary, she then took a 180 degree spin and came plummeting back into her own psyche for Therapy Tapes in 2018, exploring themes of transporting her consciousness beyond her physical body to take in the world from a far-distant view, whether from beyond the Earth or looking back into today from a day centuries in the future.

On it, she had fully embraced a jazzy boom-bap vibe. It’s a flowing, melodic adventure that sounds like a pared back Lauryn Hill on tracks like “Self Love,” in which she depicts the crystals on her windowsill, the dreamcatcher nearby as she meditates. “Organic Domes” reveals her struggle with loneliness, being in a place with “no friends,” and trying to imagine an escape through the sensation of flying.

Her focus is more earthy and introspective on Spiritual Misfit, where Clyne has morphed her sound palette again to introduce synth-pop, sultry beats, and echoey, almost New Age ambient soundscapes. She is not the fierce MC on The Fisherman’s Daughter. She is a dramatic pop singer – sounding like the lovechild of Adele and Florence Welch on tracks like “Love My Darkness.”

On “Mother’s Cries,” Clyne channels her newfound sensation of being both a mother and a grandmother (her daughter gave birth last year). On the track, fellow artist and friend Katarina Stevens plays the bağlama, a stringed instrument traditionally used in classical Ottoman and Turkish folk music. It was at the peak of Clyne’s darkest period during COVID that circumstances conspired to bring the two women together.

“She’s another Greek sister and we connected through Facebook last year. I’d just separated from my husband of many years during COVID and I was in such a dark place,” she recalls. Stevens messaged her in response to Clyne’s post about suffering and feeling alone. “After that, things evolved to understanding that she’s a Greek artist playing these amazing instruments.” Once the sketch of “Mother’s Cries” had formed, Clyne sent over the skeleton and Stevens laid her bağlama over it.

“As I was writing it, I wanted to write about a woman understanding her ancient voice: a witch, a goddess, an empress. I wanted the sound to be big and to use all my vocals to project it out and let people feel the strength of a goddess that sings to the universe, that sings to Mother Earth,” Lady Lash explains. “Adding the bağlama, I felt the Greek side of me and the Aboriginal side of me coming together and using that in a powerful way.”

Follow Lady Lash on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Aisha Badru Finds Transcendence on the Ground on The Way Back Home EP

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Trapani

Spiritual growth is often framed in terms of ascension: rising up above the seemingly trivial matters of the world, communing with other dimensions. Yet for many, true enlightenment occurs when one is able to be on the ground, in the present, connected to the people around them. It’s the latter achievement that Orlando, Florida-based indie-folk singer-songwriter Aisha Badru has come to value over the years and celebrates with her latest EP The Way Back Home, out December 3 via Nettwerk.

Badru spent the bulk of her 20s traveling through Bali, India, and other spiritual destinations. “I’m someone who is very flighty; I’ve always felt like I have to travel to this place or that place to find myself and find the meaning of life,” she says. “I was really just searching for something better than what I felt my life was, but I realized when I was traveling that that wasn’t the answer — that the meaning of life was something that was with me, not necessarily something external that I have to go on a voyage to find.”

As she came to understand the value of “grounding and sinking my roots into a life of stability and consistency and committing,” Badru did a 180: last year, she bought a home with her partner, with whom she has twins. “That feeling something was missing helped me get centered and really ask ‘What am I really looking for?’ and I think what I was looking for was a sense of security, which was ironic because what I was doing was insecure, like traveling. I was trying to find somewhere I really belonged.”

The notion of learning to stay in one place is perhaps one many nowadays can relate to. Even as restrictions lift, we’ve been forced to find roots, sometimes in places where we didn’t plan to plant them. So, Badru’s single “Rooted” may be encouraging to those who think they’re stuck but could actually be building a foundation. Against gentle guitar strumming, twinkly chimes, and hopeful synths, she softly sings: “Plant your feet upon the earth/Know your value, know your worth/Take a breath that’s long and deep/You’re carried by the ground beneath.”

The folky single “The Way Back Home” speaks to similar themes of building a home and staying there, and also holding the space for those who aren’t as grounded: “Go ahead and see what you need to see/I can only hope that you think of me/And when your feet are tired and swollen/Follow the sound of this melody,” she sings against soothing acoustic guitar, bass, and drums. Similar to her 2019 single “Water,” the song speaks to the ability to find peace and acceptance within yourself when the world around you is chaotic and unpredictable.

Another single off the EP, “Rebirth,” uses mellifluous spoken word poetry against piano and drums to describe the painful process of personal transformation and the larger evolution of humanity, with inspiring and thought-provoking lines like “What if God is here undercover hidden within each other?”

“Graves,” the first song on the EP, has a darker sound, with dramatic violin and cello telling a story about the parts of ourselves we “bury” because they’re too painful to look at. On the atmospheric “Home,” she sings about how the people we love give us a feeling of stability, and on “Worthwhile,” she describes navigating COVID times against simple piano: “Trust that the dark days are gonna end/First the old has to fall for something new to ascend.”

All in all, the EP is about “understanding the deeper meaning of the things that happen to us in our lives and looking at them from a perspective that helps us move forward in a productive way, as opposed to getting caught up in the bad things in life,” says Badru. “It’s about really interpreting these things from a different lens so we can move forward and feel alive.”

Badru released her first song, “Waiting Around,” in 2016, and after being picked up and used in a Volkswagen commercial, it now has over 40,000,000 Spotify streams. She released her first full-length album, Pendulum, in 2018, and recently performed at The Big Quiet with Deepak Chopra in Brooklyn, which helped her understand the impact she hopes to make on the world. “I want to serve the role to people that Deepak serves for the people that he touches,” she says. “Going back to my first EP, it was a lot of me just dumping out my suffering and my feelings and my sadness. Now [I’m] reaching this point of: How can I be someone that can help someone feel better, help someone feel more secure in their experience?”

The Way Back Home marks a big step in that direction, as she inspires listeners to value people and connection as they define home for themselves — and to keep a steady, peaceful center no matter where their current home is or what’s going on around them.

Follow Aisha Badru on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Casper Skulls Build Monument to Memory on Sophomore LP Knows No Kindness

Photo Credit: Amanda Fotes

When Casper Skulls vocalist/guitarist Melanie St-Pierre was eight years old, she witnessed a murder. Playing outdoors with childhood pals, a neighbor shot her best friend’s father seemingly unprompted. St-Pierre testified at the trial, then buried the memory deep. On her band’s latest record, Knows No Kindness (released November 12 via Next Door Records), she excavates this and other moments – some bitter, some sweet – with a poet’s precision, unearthing truths about the human condition in the process.

“Witness,” for instance – the song that deals with the murder – doesn’t recount the grisly details of what she saw that day. Rather, it reframes the trauma as moment in time where a young girl fought for and found justice, resonating with strength while, understandably, honoring the innocence that was lost. “When I was young/I never knew what death was/Or that I could live next to it,” St-Pierre sings in the last verse. “Loving someone and then they’re gone/What have you done?” It’s a powerful statement about believing children, and young girls especially, and how traumatic events can reverberate through our lives to emerge in unexpected ways.

Released November 12, Knows No Kindness takes its title from Georgia O’Keefe’s description of the desert’s formidable beauty, but also the process with which she rendered overlooked objects in exacting detail. St-Pierre does the same with fleeting and forgotten echoes in her life’s history, turning them over and over until her songs, like O’Keefe’s paintings, take their larger-than-life shapes. And the rest of Casper Skulls – guitarist Neil Bednis, drummer Aurora Bangarth, and bassist Fraser McClean – help bring out each detail with compositions just as painstakingly rendered, recorded across four different Toronto-area studios.

“We worked with so many different engineers on this record… We knew what we wanted for it. We self-produced it, but the engineers that we worked with really helped us get it to where it needed to be and it was a little bit meticulous,” says St-Pierre. “We worked very hard on this record. Down to the arrangements and everything – we all had helping hands, we all made contributions. It was really nice to work with some local people in Toronto that helped us, that understood our vision, and understood what we were going for and understood the songs.”

That’s vastly different from how they approached debut LP Mercy Works, whose lead single “Lingua Franca” was nomimated for a SOCAN Songwriting Prize in 2018. A noisier affair that earned them supporting slots for Thurston Moore, Julie Ruin, PUP, Hop Along, Speedy Ortiz, and Charly Bliss among others, the attention may have “spooked” St-Pierre just a bit, she says, though she notes that her bandmates help keep her grounded. Almost immediately after the release of Mercy Works, the songs that would form Knows No Kindness began to pour out.

“Actually, we’ve been trying to get to this record for a while. We started off being a bit of a louder band in the beginning – [Neil and I] were just kind of fooling around in a basement with some pals and ‘King of Gold‘ happened, and it’s just like, [your first song] ends up being the trajectory of your band,” St-Pierre says of the decidedly post-punk inflected track, on which Bednis takes lead vocal. “That’s what was coming out at the time. But that was such a long time ago. That was six years ago! And just as you grow and change, you get better at writing, you get more mature. And I think for me anyways, this is the record where I really do feel like I have improved so much with songwriting and this is the statement of that, I guess. I’m a musician, I really feel it, it feels nice.”

“This album is almost like a fresh start in a way,” says Bangarth, who joined the band as Knows No Kindness was taking shape, bringing both classical training and years of studio drumming to provide the band’s heartbeat. “There’s still a lot of sonic similarities – Neil’s guitar tone is a defining characteristic of the band. It’s still there. But it does kind of feel almost like a fresh start in a way because there’s such a different take on things.”

“I feel like we never do songwriting the same way each time. We change our sound a lot… and that’s great cause it’s a growing process, you’re learning how to write, you’re learning how to put away things that don’t serve you anymore, and you’re picking up new things,” St-Pierre confirms. “This new record was just what was serving me at the time aesthetically. I was homesick a lot, thinking a lot about Massey, which was a town that my grandma grew up in; I spent a lot of time there as a child. And [my hometown] Sudbury as well. Those are just the things that organically came out. I think it made things a little bit more melancholy but in a really nice sort of way that we could still keep it very much Casper Skulls.”

“Tommy” was the song that kickstarted things, and it opens the album with resonant piano notes. St-Pierre and Bednis had noticed that a friendly man in their neighborhood was leaving items behind in the bus shelter for others to take. “They were things that were really useful, like bike helmets or jams, CDs, things to make people happy, and they would be gone by the end of the day,” St-Pierre recalls. She began to wonder about his interior life, about the unknowable realities of everyone we encounter. “I’ll never understand that part of me that is tied to you,” she sings as the band builds up a lush sonic palette.

“The second verse on ‘Tommy’ is my favorite thing on the whole album,” Bangarth says. “Just all of those layers and pieces together… I just really love it. It’s dense but everything has its place and I’m just really proud of how that turned out.”

Like her mysterious neighbor leaving useful items behind for others, St-Pierre leaves breadcrumbs across Knows No Kindness for listeners to follow. “Honestly it really did create these helping hands to like hold up my childhood and examine these things, and it started with ‘Tommy,'” she says. On “Thesis,” she pays tribute to an English teacher who encouraged her scattered prose – and kept St-Pierre writing. But it also acts as a blueprint for the rest of the record. “The first few lines of it literally talk about ‘Witness,’ the next few lines talk about ‘Knows No Kindness,’ the next few lines talk about ‘Stay the Same’ – it’s all in there,” St-Pierre points out. “The last lines are about me being who I am. I love winter; I think that it has something really beautiful in it and for me. It reminds me of my femininity, it’s what makes me feel good and creative.”

While St-Pierre cites “Ouija” as the best song she’s ever written, Bangarth points to “Rose of Jericho” as a personal favorite. It’s named for a type of tumbleweed that goes dormant and appears dead, but dramatically revives when in contact with water. “The way that song grows, it starts off completely different but it feels natural. I think that song is a good representation of where we are now, and remember, this is where we were.”

The personal touches extend to the album’s artwork too, which St-Pierre designed (she’s also a visual artist who has directed the bulk of the band’s visual aesthetic). The 1960 photograph depicts Massey, Ontario townsfolk (including St-Pierre’s grandmother, Velma) protesting the A.E.C.L in an attempt to stop the now-defunct nuclear waste company from creating a runoff where the Spanish and Sables Rivers meet, in an area known as The Mouth Park. They were successful in running the company out of town, and St-Pierre spent her childhood swimming in the park, referenced in an album track called, appropriately, “The Mouth,” which exhibits the quiet/loud dynamics that make Knows No Kindness such a revelation to listen to. “The Mouth” ranks among Mercy Works track “Colour of the Outside” as one of the band’s favorite to play live. “I love being able to do some loud things. I love to rock out. If we couldn’t do that live anymore, I’d be sad.” St-Pierre says. “I like being able to get really quiet and little and then get really loud. I think that there’s such a space for both.”

Though Casper Skulls had to take a break from touring amid the pandemic, they’d already been working out most of the songs on Knows No Kindness on stage. “It’s almost like the album was written in two phases,” explains Bangarth. “We got all the sounds written for being tour-ready first, and then just by touring them a ton, we got really comfortable on them. Then there was kind of this second process of arranging them for the album. By that point we’d already become super familiar with them, and had been tweaking them along the way anyway.” All but one of the recording sessions took place before lockdown in March of 2020; that last session got pushed back to July. Since then, they’ve been working on new stuff – and will likely go in a completely new direction once more.

“I don’t think one person has all the answers for songs – maybe some people do if they’re like, Bob Dylan. But I personally really love collaboration. I think it’s a really beautiful thing. It’s nice to bring people into the story, into the fold and just have these ideas bouncing around and these exciting moments. I live for that,” says St-Pierre. “I think our next record I just want to make some really nice striking songs and collaborations and let things kind of breathe a bit more, and just see how that works out.”

After making such a vulnerable record, St-Pierre definitely needs the emotional respite. Writing Knows No Kindness was, at times, “pretty unbearable,” she says. “We would jam and you would be able to tell I’d be kind of getting weird, crying, or something. But then eventually it started to be better. When you bring them to jam and start working on them, you start seeing these songs taking all these different shapes. It becomes this other thing and you can detach a little bit. Then when you start playing them live, you’re the one singing, it comes back again, but then when you do it over and over and over again for a tour, you’re like, okay I got this, I’m not gonna break.”

“But there are still moments,” she adds. “Say I’m playing live and it’s getting real emotional, we’re playing really well and I’m really feeling it, I’ll cry during a set. It’ll happen. And I’ll play it off a little, but you can hear the vulnerability in my voice or something, you can tell. People will come up to me after we play and be like, I don’t know what that song was about but it made me really reflect on something that happened to me. I’ve had a lot of those [comments], like this song made me think this, and thank you for that and that is a huge accomplishment. That’s why we do this.”

This is the very fiber of Knows No Kindness, and each song is constructed in service to building up those moments and memories. It’s the kind of album you can only write once, though; while there are glimmers of Casper Skulls’ noisy past, no song here feels interchangeable with any on their debut.

“I really enjoyed like honing in on all these things but they’re very much for this,” St-Pierre says. “There’s a time and a place for each record, I think, and this one is just, this is its time and place. I wouldn’t have put ‘Witness’ on Mercy Works and I might not put it on the next record. It exists in this universe that Knows No Kindness exists in.”

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