Black Dresses forget they're broken up for a second year in a row

 

“Forget Your Own Face” is the follow up to last year’s Forever in Your Heart, a record that made my top fifteen at the end of last year. It’s also the second record Ava Rook and Devi McCallion have put out as the band since breaking up the project in 2020. This studio-only status as well as the other music the two make, make it hard to be ready for these records, especially when they just drop on announcement, so I don’t really have much prior information to share with you, except to just dive into the songs themselves.

We start off very messy but as always very fun with “u_u2.” (Not sure how I’d say that out loud.) I’m loving the synth and guitar built beat that’s structured like a club banger in a post-apocalyptic dance hall played over broken speakers. Vocally and lyrically this feels like a diss track that I’m missing the context of and the passage;

“Who the fuck are you trying to do this shit I do?

Who the fuck are you coming in the booth sounding like me?

I wish you were me. Man, I wish you weren’t me.

You got this record deal but you’re so ugly.”

Rapped by McCallion not only demonstrates a lot about what I love about the freeform nature of this project but it also kind of speaks to the themes of the whole record. This idea that art forms can be reduced to products made by people who could care less about the heart of what they’re doing.

“Let’s Be” follows the tone of the first track instrumentally but shows a side of Black Dresses that made me a fan in the first place, which is the delivery. Every single word and phrase is articulated so precisely to the point that even just band calls like “let it rip” are spoken in a way that sticks with you. Lyrically again it is a trip and while I thought the track was attacking homophobia I can’t quite be sure even with the lyrics in front of me. That being said the quote;

“Never give up on what you wanted even if it’s stupid. God is stupid, let’s be stupid.”

Sticks out quite a bit. Not just in the way it’s delivered but just the weight of saying something so bleak yet so inspirational.

There is yet another incredible, end of the world style beat on “earth worm” only this time we’ve left the club and gone to a very run down arcade. This sonic theme kind of bleeds into the following track, “NO NORMAL” as well. Lyrically, on the last verse by Rook, this to me feels like one of those very jokey social media posts where the OP asks something like “would you still love me if I were a worm?” But instead of a question it’s an existential wish that the pain of everyday life and the weight of expectations were off you to instead have your priorities be on something much more simplistic.

“I wish I was a worm, crawl into the dirt, now no one can hurt me.”

I’m a little thrown off on how normal “doomspiral” is if I’m being honest. Other than the bass sounding incredibly blown out I almost don’t believe this is a Black Dresses cut. There’s lovely production with beautiful keys. There is also a breathtaking vocal delivery as well as a chorus with incredible sentiment. Definitely a curveball but with the record being so short it’s not an unwelcome one.

“MONEY MAKES YOU STUPID” to me is the instrumental highlight on the entire record. It opens with this dance beat that adds some cowbell as well as some effects that match each vocal as the song goes on. It then plays what I can only describe as a Space Invaders sound effect before it switches over entirely. After this switch it keeps a similar sound effect but in a much more spaced out setting and becoming almost trance-like. It’s one of those moments that I could never do justice in a description and you really should experience.

There’s of course a ton of cool production going on in “GAY UGLY AND HARD TO UNDERSTAND” from the descending key passages and the impressive vocal delivery of the final verse but I’m loving the energy in the lyricism most of all here. Sure, saying Ru Paul made being gay “uncool” seems a little out there but at the root of everything McCallion says on here she’s basically explaining how the “beautiful” bits of queer culture are used as an easy captilist tool while meanwhile, for those of us not in that sanct of queerness, it’s not really all acceptance and cheers from a hetero and cis normative society. She’s also attacking mainstream sides of punk as well with verses like;

“Off my old CD you could copy a track, sell it to Roadrunner make your money back. It’s the corniest shit put Travis Barker on it. Oh my God, what the fuck is your problem?”

Which, is great to hear and she’s right to call out! Barker has commodified and created an entire gatekeeping sub-culture of his own genre, which maybe is another write up entirely.

We get a fitting ending in “nightwish,” a track that has a more straightforward beat and a softer delivery. There is a line here that really sticks out to me in;

“I’m grateful for the time we had to do childish things, like making songs; like this one.”

A line to me that speaks to looking at the project for what it was, two friends making music together, before the overt popularity of the project caused a distressing time in the lives of it’s members. With lines like that it also becomes clear to me why these two have written and released two albums together even after technically splitting.

Overall, I find Forget Your Own Face to be a lot more chaotic than Forever in Your Heart and as these two records were my first exposure to the project, I’m starting to see what clicked with listeners so much before I arrived. I find the purposely low quality sound to be a massive part of the charm and while I think a lot of artists in Black Dresses lane get accused of sounding like a mess, I never really agree with that. To me, things like extra loud production and blown out vocals are a tool that I find split between either being a correct artistic decision or a way to hide the fact that your songs just aren’t very good. In Black Dresses case, however I find them to sound like a mess, just artfully so. For me personally I wouldn’t be surprised if this landed in a higher placement at year’s end than the project did last year and ultimately finding myself admiring this studio-bound status for the band especially if they continue to churn out records of this quality and they’re happy with the art they’re creating.

Black Dresses on BandCamp

Follow me on Twitter