You’re All Perverted

Birthday Girl “Did You Know I Write You Poems?”

Eva Smittle’s vocal performance keeps you edge – she’s flirtatious, she’s threatening, she’s afraid, she’s romantic, she’s nihilistic – and moves between those moods somewhat unpredictably. She comes across like someone who can’t decide how she feels about other people’s lust for her, and the moments where she seems totally repulsed ring as true as when she’s reciprocating the lust, and maybe that repulsion feeds into her desire. The music basically sounds like slow, seasick grunge – heavy and sickly but somehow still fairly sensual and sexy.

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Cumgirl8 “Ahhhh!hhhh! (I Don’t Wanna Go)”

A kinda interesting thing for me has been a lot of the styles that were hot when I started this site in the early 00s are back in style, and while that certainly makes me feel my age, I mostly feel excited to have new versions of things I liked 20 years ago. In the case of this Cumgirl8 song, they’re playing in an 00s electro/post-punk mode I’ve always loved. I hear traces of Lolita Storm, Chicks On Speed, Erase Errata, Ladytron, and Metric in this music, but it’s very much its own thing with lyrics grounded in the present, at least in terms of vernacular. But aside from some familiar creative decisions, I think what I’m responding to most in this particular song is the mix of anxiety and venom, and a seeming ambivalence about both feelings.

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LustSickPuppy “Empathy Reserved”

“Empathy Reserved” is very abrasive with its harsh electronic tones, aggro rapping and frantic chopped vocals. But it’s also remarkably tuneful when it shifts gears about 40 seconds in, even if that part is also at a freakishly high tempo. As with 100 Gecs, a bratty and deliberately difficult aesthetic is more interesting and hits harder when there’s some song craft at the core of the composition.

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