Stubborn Aphrodite
You got me in the tits
I thought I was an alien
Found out I was a twit
My body is a prison
But how can I escape?
Doesn’t matter what I do
I’m filled up with a hateGo take the piss
I’m flat with a wit
Not soft full of shit
Now off with her tits
Off with her tits
Off with her tits
Off with her tits
Now, there’s obviously something very striking about those lyrics, isn’t there? Something that would immediately make polite society raise their eyebrows in shock and the cool hip young dudes like yourself and I nod our heads in approval at such colloquialism usage detailing the consideration of intrusive thoughts. I’d actually go as far as to call the lyrical flourish absolutely unique. No, seriously, can you think of one other song that uses the slang word ‘twit’?? That’s some real Desperate Dan era swearing! Canadians, man, respect due.
I’m joking, of course! Allie X is using a bit of humour to reflect a serious issue, then here’s here using a bit of humour to highlight that reflection of a serious issue. If you want to write a piece on this blog post, using humour to report on me using humour to highlight Allie X’s use of humour to reflect a serious issue, then we can keep this chain going. In fact, if you don’t forward this message to at least ten friends then you will have bad luck forever. Also, I will have sex with your mother.
Off With Her Tits is, hidden beneath its undeniably striking title, actually a near body horror about how the protagonist realising that as soon as they grow bazongas they’re fated to never again be taken seriously as a human being, and instead just objectified as an object of lust. What if you don’t even identify as a woman?? Tough tits, as it were, those fleshy glands hanging off your chest are for our pleasure and mean that you are a woman and therefore exist for our gratification. ““I’ll never be a lady/Why make me feel a fool?/Take this flesh and suck it out”/And stop the ridicule“.It is meant to be a somewhat funny song – a massive exaggeration to parody and satirise society’s expectations of someone assigned female at birth – but its darker than dark humour encases an incredibly serious issue.
Soooooooooooooooo… Yeah. That’s basically Allie X’s jam. Pretty cool, no?
I feel mad, yeah, I’m all worked up
This beat is hard but not hard enough
Won’t someone slap my face, make it sting?
Because they wanna cry but I can’t quit laughing
Spend your coins on a counterfeit
She got rainbow hair, she got a BB lift
I guess you never learned about quality
I feel bad for you, I feel bad for me
Oh, what a shame
Don’t you agree?
Wasting your time sleeping on me
And Allie X has absolutely got us there, haven’t they? Has us all bang to fucking rights! I’ve been sleeping on Alexandra Hughes and – come on now, be honest – so have you. Which is really embarrassing, even Katy freaking Perry was into her a full decade ago, where have we been? At least Les Savy Fav got that one mention back in 2007 from me, where have Allie X’s flowers been?? This is made more galling by the fact that, like Les Savy Fav, this music is absolutely My Kind Of Shit®. It’s dark yet euphoric pumping synth pop with lyrics that drag you to extremely dark places without ever neglecting the wit. It covers huge existential issues yet manages to Trojan Horse such deep reflections inside absolutely banging club pop. Shit, that may as well be the fucking title of this blog! And then there’s John and Johnathan, which is just about a couple of guys who came to one of Allie X’s shows and contains the lyric “John and Jonathan are at the café/Jon likes coffee black, and John, au lait”. Because they’re a couple and one’s called John and the other’s called Jonathan! That’s pretty epic, yeah?!
Listen, they’re not all covering huge existential issues, but the hit rate is extraordinarily high!
Aside from paeans to partners who have similar names (!) though, ‘Girl With No Face’ is an extraordinary, synth goth masterwork, with skeletal beats and macabre synth stabs somehow contriving to make one of the most fucking fun albums of the year. The 80’s homage can often be a little too much: it’s a little jarring to listen to Allie X’s 2014 debut single Catch and it sounding so of the early 2010’s synthpop zeitgeist, and yet ten years later we have an album that could have easily have been released in 1984. For the mathematicians: that means Allie X’s new record comes ten years after their debut and sound like it was made forty years previously.
On the other hand:
Album Title as AI Image
Yep. Knew we’d get something disturbing.
Necessary Evil 
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