There’s Something Evil

Cute Door “Play Hooky”

“Play Hooky” is very post-Lana Del Rey in the way it uses irony as a mechanism of grounding its lyrical details but also distancing it from reality. But the music itself is more like a deliberately spooky John Carpenter-ish version of trap, and Cute Door’s vocals are much closer to the girlish deadpan rap of Kitty Pryde in tone and cadence. (Remember “Okay Cupid”? Amazing song, really holds up, plays as an evocative character study now.)

I think you could ask a lot of people what they think this song is about and get very different answers, all of them saying something about who the listener is. But I think broadly this is a song presenting horny lady rap – “he says my mouth feels wet like my pussy,” etc – in the context of horror. But I think there’s a lot of room for interpretation in terms of the specific subgenre of horror, and in her role in the implied narrative. I think she’s meant to be understood as a sort of supernatural or demonic figure who uses sex to lure in victims, like a siren or a succubus or whatever Scarlett Johansson was in Under the Skin.

But there’s still some vulnerability and vague paranoia in her voice that suggests a more ordinary scenario, or her not quite being an aggressor. It makes me think of an old U2 lyric – “A vampire or a victim? It depends on who’s around.” It’s never clear what side of that she’s on in the song, and the ambiguity makes the song more unsettling and interesting.

Buy it from Bandcamp.