Weston Allen. Hair by Gregg Lennon Jr
By Eli Enis
Where to launch? There’s the surprising collaborations: My Agenda, the second album from experimental pop maximalist Dorian Electra, facets disco legends the Village Of us proudly owning the hook of a song describing homosexual frogs. They portion condominium with the viral superstar Rebecca Shadowy, who croons about converting fuckboys into simps. Then there’s the sound: a dizzying hodge-podge of dubstep thumps, shaded metal shrieks, and baroque keys, with surprisingly radio-ready lyrics satirizing far-excellent ideologies culled from the get’s darkest corners with an enigmatic mix of earnestness and absurdist humor.
And, of course, there’s the artist themself. The 28-twelve months-traditional musician grew up in Houston and ran with a crew that practiced martial arts on the playground and played Dungeons & Dragons — the selection of youth who went all out for their steampunk prom theme. A superfan of the English put up-punk band The Horrors since high college (in a fair looking plump-circle second, frontman Faris Badwan is featured on the video display “Iron Fist”), Electra first got consideration for their song when, as a senior, they launched a lo-fi admire song penned to the classical liberal economist Friedrich Hayek.
Weston Allen. Hair by Gregg Lennon Jr.
It become once in 2017 that Electra got a main tag boost with a feature on Charli XCX’s “Femmebot,” adopted by the lengthy-awaited unlock of their debut album, Flamboyant, two years later. That contains production by Dylan Brady of 100 gecs, the file become once constituted of eccentric electronic song that established Electra as a fixture within the budding hyperpop scene. The sound grew more playful, but Electra in no contrivance abandoned their academic contrivance to lyricism. Thematically, Flamboyant become once dedicated to exploring and critiquing aspirational male archetypes: the overachieving finance bro, the macho boxer, and the sleazy Hugh Hefner knockoff.
My Agenda, conversely, is written from the perspective of male outcasts: conventionally unattractive or awkward nerds and, particularly, incels, an web subculture relating to folks that purchase into tale themselves “involuntarily celibate.” There are songs about feeling angry on the sphere for feeling undesirable and unloved (“F The World,” “Edgelord”), fantasies about incomes the ideal lady with gentlemanly prowess (“M’Lady”), and tracks that purchase into tale the sophisticated homoeroticism between straight chums (“Sorry Bro (I Like You)”). There are lyrical references to fedoras and winking quotes from The Joker, playful gateways to explore the genuine concerns that plague the get incel community: violent rhetoric and open suicidal ideation, to boot to rampant homophobia and sexism.
“I become once trying to critique these views but to boot empathize with them,” Electra tells MTV Files. “Namely with meme tradition, it’s so straightforward to call somebody a neckbeard or a fedora-tipper excellent because they give to protect the door open. In the event you take a seat with the field subject, surely listen in on it, and then folks gaze it within the context of the relaxation of the venture, they acquire the deeper that skill and deeper connection to this total crisis in masculinity and tradition wars.”
Electra’s impetus for diving into this field subject came from seeing how the alt-excellent (a meme-pushed flavor of white nationalism that’s in most cases adjoining to incel communities) became so smartly-liked by the rise of Donald Trump. And on condition that Electra emerged from a distinctly web-born musical subculture, they were already primed with fluency in memes, irony, and oversharing that’s required to surely possess sense of this intrinsically get-based utterly everyday life. Then yet again, as fascinated as they were by the social ailments of the edgelord psyche, Electra become once equally drawn to its cultural aesthetics, worship fedoras and swords. They counsel that it displays an antiquated version of masculinity rooted in chivalry and warrior-worship honor “that surely shape the worldview and self-image of the oldsters in a few of those subcultures.”
That imagery is dispersed all the contrivance via Electra’s song movies, which feature worship supplementary texts. An epic, digital rendering of Electra wielding a blade atop a broad pile of skulls begins the 2-piece visual for “Gentleman” and “M’Lady,” sooner than they flip on a cap that floats down from the heavens. It cuts to lo-fi photos of the singer donning a trench coat and lumbering around a grimy condominium stuffed with video video games and instant-meals wrappers. It’s intentionally ridiculous and ironic, but it surely also strikes a recurring balance between poking fun on the oft-memed getup and making it glance worship an irregular style assertion.
“I in actual fact assume that that stuff is badass,” Electra says with laughable. “I guess the sword is badass, and the ditch coat and dragon necklace [are cool].” Furthermore, as a gender-fluid one who interchangeably gifts as male and female, Electra connects with both characters in that video. “I name as both the neckbeard and the “M’girl,’” they are saying. “I worship to possess myself into this sinful, Dorito-crunching, Mountain Dew-chugging person — which I very great am — but to boot this ideal delusion elf.”
That ambiguity is central to the overarching Dorian Electra venture, whether they’re toying with gender expression or smashing the boundaries of vogue, most effective captured by the breakout video display, “Sorry Bro (I Like You).” With jingling drums, a gooey hook, and witty lines written from the perspective of trusty chums falling in admire (“And when I try to glance at you you glance away / From time to time it’s laborious to search out the phrases I wanna remark,”) — smartly, possibly. “I major to possess something that will maybe well literally be a bro anthem, but something that will maybe well moreover be more sexual force,” they present. “Something that is hidden romantic force, but to boot something that will be utterly platonic.”
“Sorry Bro (I Like You)” and “Gentleman” are two of the more lighthearted tracks on My Agenda, but songs worship “Edgelord,” a groaning Auto-Tune-heavy video display which facets a verse from the “Friday” singer Rebecca Shadowy, and “F The World” fall the dusky identification of the incel. The latter is a ten-car pile-up of hardstyle, grindcore, and hip-hop that Electra describes as “the rawest, easy, and literal expression of this selection of angst.” Pointing to its aggressively cynical lyrics (“F the sphere most effective I worship it / F the sphere I would love to hug it”), they add, “The hatred of the sphere and looking for to commit violence surely comes from a sense of rejection, a sense of looking for to be cherished, a sense of literal horniness and frustration. To me it’s, ‘I literally would love to fuck the sphere,’ but to boot, ‘Fuck the sphere!’”
It become once crucial to Electra that every song on My Agenda be written from the main-person point of view. Quite than viewing their topics as eliminated characters with utterly no redeeming qualities, Electra is empathetic in their critiques. “What in here is practically universally human and relatable?” they question themselves. Though they’re cautious to now not equate this defective rhetoric with the lived experiences of marginalized folks, one skill that Dorian become once ready to personally insist to the incel community become once via the lens of their queerness, an ride that continually ends in emotions of loneliness and incompatibility with cultural elegance requirements.
Weston Allen. Hair by Gregg Lennon Jr.
“There’s a bunch of self-abominate, feeling worship you don’t belong, feeling worship you can’t be handsome to a accomplice, feeling worship you don’t fit into the ideal of romance or relationship,” Electra says. “Dating apps usually are now not going to be trusty for you because that it is probably going you’ll also now not slot in on hetero Tinder or Grindr, or that folks would gaze you and categorize you as this one thing. Love, ‘Oh you’re excellent this nerdy, rotten man’ or ‘you’re excellent this trans person.’”
Electra is a figurehead in a scene of pop song that’s extremely peculiar and femme-centric. Bubbly Auto-Tune and experimental electronics possess an placing ahead condominium for peculiar and trans artist to pitch-up their vocals and negate themselves with instrumentation that challenges heteronormative pop conventions. Attributable to this truth, it will even be ultimate to listen to Electra singing from the perspective of homophobes and misogynists — the very folks their community implicitly stands in opposition to. Electra recognizes the touchiness of the field subject, but they don’t gaze it as an prolonged hand to male chauvinist behavior. Quite, by the use of neckbeard aesthetics and attention-grabbing with incel ideologies in trusty faith, they hope to possess a welcoming condominium for folks from all walks of lifestyles to productively fetch with this masculinity crisis.
“If by some means somebody coming all the contrivance via my song had that selection of attain, I’d feel worship I will be hopefully contributing something definite,” they are saying. “I guess it’s utterly price it placing stuff obtainable that has ambiguity to it because that it is probably going you’ll also intention folks in who assume it’s one thing and they’re taken aback by assorted formula.”
