Tag: transgender

5 ANOHNI and the Johnsons: My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

“For me, there’s no heavenly respite; creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and our souls are an inalienable part of nature.”

Anohni Hegarty

There are those who argue that the sex/gender divide is just a socio-political
construct. Certainly this is not true for those individuals with gender dysphoria where
there is a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity. It is also the case
that class society has nurtured an ideology of femininity and masculinity which fits the
profit motive rather than peoples’ lived experience. But all of this this does not
invalidate the fact that the vast majority of humans (unhelpfully labelled ‘cis’) do not
experience a mis-match between their biological sex and their gender. This does not
mean that all is well for women who are, by virtue of both sex and gender, historically
and currently oppressed in patriarchal class societies.

SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL STICK IT IN

37 Janelle Monae: The Age of Pleasure

~ Lex Leeson ~ 8 Comments

Around twenty years after its conclusion, the original Matrix trilogy has proven to be culturally enduring. Perhaps because now it’s pretty universally accepted as a clear allegory for the alienating forces of capitalism/the experiences of being transgender/how the pernicious illusion of how gynecocracy and feminism subjugates men/the Jewish people returning to Israel/reaffirming white supremacy in the face of multiculturalism/the New Testament/a story told in reverse about a guy who stops taking drugs and gets a job, and I’m not going to debate that here, that particular mystery is now solved. We’ll just conclude that when you make a movie about some tech bro with no friends who feels alone and alienated, a lot of people online are going to relate with it. And, come on, it’s actually a very broad story and set-up that you can basically bring whatever you want to.

some tech bros somehow have LESS than no friends

But I’m not here to talk about gay shit like allegories. I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards. Can we all shuffle out of our Media Studies group wank for one second and just look at the actual film? Personally, I believe that all the films are about people with trenchcoats shooting shit up, which was extremely popular in 1999. Please, I beg of you, insert a bit of wider historical context into your media literacy. I’m joking, of course: if the Matrix was in anyway tied to US school shootings then we’d be getting more than twenty Matrix movies a year! And if the country were getting that many Matrix movies I’m sure the US government would declare a state of national emergency and quickly enact some sweeping and radical changes. I mean, twenty Matrix movies a year?? That’s just unthinkable! Imagine how broken and sick a society needs to be to allow that to happen?

A LITTLE CONTEXT IF YOU CARE TO LISTEN

“I’ve Been Calling it ‘Depressive Suicidal Pop Music'”; Don’t Do It Neil Wanna Know What Dragon Tastes Like

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

You should all absolutely already know this by now, but Philadelphia’s Don’t do it, Neil was already a bit fucking special. Mabel Harper has long managed to combine a Weeknd-esque ability to document the seediness and pain behind revelry and intimacy with an exquisite understanding of how right these wrongs sometimes feel that can sometimes rival Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s grasp of sheer pop bliss. Her songs often sound like the building pleasure leading towards an orgasm while having sex with someone you really shouldn’t, but always with the underlying anxiety of the size of the mess you’ll have to clean up after your messy climax. This has been quite the opening paragraph, hasn’t it?

Worryingly, there were moments in the last couple of years involving suicidal thoughts and hospitalisations that might have led to the brilliant B/X album being her final record. However, Mabel managed to survive and process the experience, and today sees the release of her new album ‘I WANNA SEE WHAT DEATH IS LIKE‘, adding new perspectives on death, grief and mortality to an artist whose personal circumstances already made her one of the rarest perspectives in pop music. As soon as I heard of its release, I had to request an interview. Which meant only one thing.

The carrier pigeon

Yeah, I know, the handwriting’s terrible, but in my defence I asked my personal carrier pigeon (Twattori) to write it himself, so my hands are clean on this one. Unfortunately, Twattori did not survive the journey and so was unable to reach Philadelphia to deliver the message. He didn’t even survive long enough to leave the UK. In fact, he didn’t make it 50 metres from my window. Because I shot him. Seriously, did you see that handwriting? Mabel would never talk to me if she saw that. Christ, Twattori was such a prick wasn’t he?

So I just hit her up on Twitter. I was going to blow her mind with questions she’d never been asked before.

Firstly, and I’m sorry for being the 65’703rd person to ask you this question, but why ‘Don’t do it, Neil’?

In the movie Dead Poets Society, there was a kid named Neil who seemed pretty gay to me. Just a really sweet boy who discovered his love of acting only to have his passion ripped away from him by his father. Long story short, Neil kills himself during the climax of the movie, and it was really, really devastating to me. So “Don’t do it, Neil” means, “Don’t do it, Neil, don’t kill yourself.”

Continue reading ““I’ve Been Calling it ‘Depressive Suicidal Pop Music’”; Don’t Do It Neil Wanna Know What Dragon Tastes Like” →

“Gender is Garbage”- Aqua Girl (Elora Faith) Gets Woods

~ Lex Leeson ~ 12 Comments
Listen, I’ve tried to explain to you gormless mouth breathers before that Aqua Girl is pretty freaking special. Her 2018 debut was one of the best albums of the year, a knock out introduction to a talent able to write songs that candidly narrated a perhaps under represented  perspective of the transgender and nonbinary experience.
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But- and I’ve long been concerned that maybe my review of her debut didn’t properly credit this- she’s not ‘just’ a singing trans woman, her gender identity doesn’t define her- she’s special because she frequently writes fucking bangers! As Elora Driver, she’s already released Sunburn, one of the best songs of 2020 so far, and she’s smart enough to realise that, logically, perfect pop songs rarely need to last longer than two minutes.
When she announced in March that her second album proper was on its way in April, I was, obviously, so excited that I wet myself for three minutes straight. Like, I just drained myself of moisture, you really should have been there.  It was clear that I needed to mark this momentous occasion with a blog post, but did this mean a freaking album review?? I hate ‘reviewing albums’! I sit down and have time to listen to the album a dozen times on repeat, then I’m supposed to dribble out 2’500 words on how it made me feel?? I don’t know how it makes me feel! I haven’t lived with it for any decent time, it hasn’t soundtracked any glories or any tragedies in my life yet, I don’t know which track I jump to if I need to be taken up or taken down, I couldn’t yet tell you which track gave me a tiny bit of an erection while I was on the bus last Wednesday morning. If I reviewed it after merely hours after first being introduced to it, I would rate it as ‘pretty good’, as that’s almost all you can say about a piece of art that early on.
So I thought… what if I interview her…? Let her explain her positions in her own words rather than me making widely inaccurate and borderline offensive statements based on me force feeding the work for a handful of listens. I put the idea to her on Twitter and she was kind enough to agree. The following interview took the form of an email exchange over the course of a couple of weeks, but if you’d prefer, picture us both in the bar at Ritz-Carlton, me furiously scribbling Elora’s words of wisdom with a stubby pencil that I store in my cap, while she sprawls back on a chaise lounge with a smirk on her mouth and one eyebrow archly raised as she charmingly answers questions between sips of cognac. All while we keep four feet apart, of course. To be honest, I thought the interview would be more of a frivolous and lighthearted series pf responses to dumb questions, but Aqua Girl actually managed to pull it into engaging and almost profound places through sheer force of charisma, until the interview ends up almost interesting. That might be Aqua Girl’s greatest achievement to date

Continue reading ““Gender is Garbage”- Aqua Girl (Elora Faith) Gets Woods” →

8 Sharon van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow

~ Lex Leeson ~ 8 Comments

Considering neither The Manic Street Preachers or Lupe Fiasco were scheduled to release an album in 2019, I don’t think I was looking forward to any record this year as much as Ms Van Etten’s fifth. Her fourth, ‘Are We There’, was one of the three albums released in 2014 that were legitimate GOAT contenders and all kinda given my joint album of the year. It was such an amazingly accomplished and powerful record, one that moved the more eloquent reviewers to state that it was “an absolutely devastating Sturm und Drag bulldozer of emotion, a sharp piercing blade of hopeless heartache that is as heartbreaking and moving as any movie you’ve seen since ‘Toy Story 3“. I have to assume that Toy Story 3 was still totally a topical reference point when that prodigiously insightful yet dangerously sexually alluring reviewer wrote that. While I spend all of my time excruciatingly droning on about how artists/people should be constantly evolving and pushing their sound/personality forward, I often catch myself just hoping that artists responsible for my favourite things will just do those favourite things again! Hey, Jazz Cartier, why isn’t the new album just Red Alert ten times?? Hey, Tegan and/or Sara, why aren’t you just giving me Walking With A Ghost?? Lil Yachty!! Why are you… why are you… Why are you doing any of this…? I… I’m not sure what exactly I want from you… But do that, please. Do Minnesota again, that’ll cheer me up. Sharon van Etten! I can’t wait to see where you take your sound and evolve your music on this new album! But, having said that, please make it exactly the same record as ‘Are We There’! You can, I dunno, add a few trap beats to a couple of songs and have track eight heavily influenced by Hardware, but make sure that, at the base level, it’s exactly the same as ‘Are We There’!! Give me those exact feels! Reach into my bloodied chest and tear out all of those emotions like you did in 2015!!

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‘Remind Me Tomorrow’… isn’t that record. It’s an incredible reimagining of what weight, muscles and undeniable gall bladders* her songwriting can achieve. Synths blast all over the place like the sounds of invading forces damaging the outer wall of the claustrophobic shelter she’s built herself to evade the apocalyptic terror of her mind outside. The first line of the album is ‘Sitting at the bar I told you everything/You said “Holy shit, you almost died!” and the following songs act as almost a flashback, telling the listener exactly what these near fatal experiences were. It’s an amazing album. Look above, it’s the eighth best album of the year. It was considered for number one, but holy shit, you’re about to see how hotly contested that accolade is this year. Like I said, every top ten album is merely different levels of essential. Buy them all, you cheap fuck.

Continue reading “8 Sharon van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow” →

19 Aqua Girl: Stereologue

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

From a woman pretending to be a man to a… No, fuck, that’s not it at all. From a woman with short hair to a… No, hang on… From a women who finds no shame in being French to a man who… no, a woman who finds no shame in… a person who…

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From a human being, to another human being. From one fabulous album to another album that’s that little bit more fabulous. Let’s take this one step at a time.

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10 ANOHNI*: Hopelessness

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

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As a culture, we westerners are still not 100% ‘OK’ with transgendered people

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I mean, obviously: we’re not even close to 100% accepting homosexuality. We pat ourselves on the back every time a country legalises gay marriage, but it speaks volumes that every country bar Ireland didn’t dare put it to a vote, and you have to wonder how much bigger that 38% opposition would be if the people of Britain and America were polled

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