Editrix
“WARN YOUR HEAD NOT TO GET CAUGHT NAPPING BECAUSE IT WILL SHORTLY BE BANGING”
Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) on Editrix
“WARN YOUR HEAD NOT TO GET CAUGHT NAPPING BECAUSE IT WILL SHORTLY BE BANGING”
Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) on Editrix
Editrix II bio from Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) (short/excerpt/edited):
What exactly is “pop music” and why is it actually Editrix? Do not expect calcified recreations of pre-existing bands, even the ones Editrix loves. But if pop is anything to do with melody, well, prepare yourself to be singing along by the second line of each track. If it’s defined by rhythm, warn your head not to get caught napping because it will shortly be banging. And if for you pop equals a full-on full-frequency sonic sickness, this one grabs your ears by the ear lapels and never lets go.
Why? Perhaps because Wendy Eisenberg is a genius. This we already knew from their solo work, intricate and delicate as an unexpectedly happened-upon wildflower. How then to emotionally, intellectuality, spiritually process the musical oxymoron that is Editrix? I don’t simply refer to the clash of a sick power trio (Steve Cameron on bass, Josh Daniel on drums, Wendy on guitar) grinding against a vocal so exquisitely vulnerable that it intentionally destabilizes itself by starting melodies on the weaker “mi” instead of the stronger “do,” never on the downbeat for help, nary a drop off reverb, and always with two Wendys singing at once to make any interpretive microdiscrepancies nakedly audible.
No, I mean a profound philosophical nonbinary, a music alienated from itself and all the more charming for being so…It is a rough-hewn yin-yang of good and evil that captures our late stage capitalist zeitgeist as blockbusteringly as Star Wars captured the good-obliterates-evil-as-long-as-we-spend-enough-money blissful ignorance of the pre-Reagan years.
Editrix is as if you took music that is borderline classical in its crystalline perfection and obsessive attention to detail, and then played it through Kurt Cobain’s Rat pedal, with not a shred of piety or decorum. From the first slide guitar notes of the opening title track, this is doom-laden nihilism lovingly decorated in heart stickers. It is caring, pretending not to care, resisting the emotive signals so abused in mainstream, which is what tells you that it really does care. It is sweet and sour and spicy and salty and bitter and umami, and cooked using only homegrown local ingredients. It is the synthesis of the dialectic and the clarion call of the proletarian revolution.