“The commercial pop industry in Los Angeles definitely hurt me,” says Canada’s sociopathic pop music alchemist. Allie X, or Alexandra Hughes. Before talking to Crash in some stores, she is jet-lagged and engaged in conversation. The night before, she arrived in London. There, her “biggest market” is established for her tastes. As expected, she was active, her third studio album released earlier that day to rave reviews, the brutal, leathery ’80s classic Girl With No Face, and sleep-deprived. Being drunk (even in a radiant mood). She admits that a cathartic album like this requires her to “let go like a balloon” and spend some time away from the album, but that’s not all yet. This is her most authentic Ally . “[In the LA pop industry] I felt confused, confused, frustrated, and misunderstood. I questioned my own values. It was curved to fit my body. ”
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At the time, I was restless about conforming, so the only solution was control: completely self-produced records. During the Canadian summer of 2020, when “The Girl with No Face” was born, and during the period taken over by the coronavirus pandemic, she [a] Experimental taste from the late 70’s to early 80’s [post-punk, new wave] It’s music,” she explained over Zoom. Over time, she grew fidgety with the beat and succumbed to a budding desire for cathartic authenticity in her sound, but these songs were influenced by British and German bands like New Order and Kraftwerk, respectively. The emulation of the genre required a drastic change in the established imitative style. Simply put, the commercial pop industry wasn’t scratching an itch. Ally stopped popularizing the inauthentic plug-ins of the 80s and instead sought out analog equipment from the past to give it proper homage. She said, “I was tired of hearing the modern version of ’80s synth pop. I was craving something that sounded authentic to that time. Modern songs like Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ and many of The Weeknd’s songs There are no drums. These are great records and I’m not criticizing them, but there was a gap in authentic sounding post-punk music. ”
Guided by raw DIY production and avant-garde experimentalism with post-punk and ’80s new wave sensibilities, and with vintage technology in hand, ‘Girl With No Face’ champions imperfect throat instincts. began to form while resisting the mainstream pop scaffolding. Her third effort is a screeching, frenetic, time-travelling journey in stark contrast to the picture-perfect alternative pop of her previous cycles. Stitched together by vintage sci-fi soundscapes, perhaps a little influenced by George Orwell’s 1984, which she read at the time, this record brings the anarchic Allie to modern times. It depicts a war with a dystopia. The contemporaneity of the vile, insane, and disturbing future she faces. ”
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But Faceless Girl, originally titled Weird World, is much more than a dystopian freedom fight. The solitary and claustrophobic creative process allowed for self-reconciliation and recognition of an identity long suppressed by conformity. It was “like staring into a mirror,” she says, and “The Girl Without a Face” the reality of pop music, turns around and cracks open Ally’s mask, resulting in complete ego death. “I got sucked into a vortex, thrown around, beaten up, bruised. I was into it. […] For the first time in my life, I immersed myself in my true self: eccentric, direct, masculine. [person]. Someone who rubs people the wrong way. ” So, the darkly confessional “Faceless Girl” is a dedication to her self, and the collapse of her ego causes Allie to develop bizarre and insane beliefs about her darkest parts, including her own health. Now I can express my joy.
The Girl Without a Face’s main weirdness is a thorough dissection of her own biology, favoring a faithful portrayal of what it takes to be Allie X. Prior to that, in 2022, Ally canceled her North American and Canadian tour citing her chronic illness. She had been an influence on her for over 20 years. “I just want to keep it real.” she wrote to x. “Despite our best efforts, sometimes our bodies fail. […] I’ve always had big dreams, […] I won’t be able to let them go. […] I’m far from the ideal candidate for a pop singer. ” Allie said that throughout her career she had been sick many times “without anyone noticing,” which led her to worry that she was “a disservice to the music industry.” . But one day she stopped caring about it getting in her way. “This condition that I have is going to be a part of the rest of my life. It could end up killing me. Writing this album made me want to let it out. .”
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Lead single “Black Eye” is a sinewy anthem, pantomiming and normalizing chronic pain to the point of euphoria. “Hit songs feel like dancing in the rain,” she belts out over punchy synths, “Give me that beat/No need to cry/Just a black eye.” is”. Ally explains that she was given her power by surrendering to her own dark reality, something she definitely can relate to. People who are in abusive relationships, people who have terrible families, people who have chronic illnesses…pain is so universal. “Black Eye” is a cheerful embrace of pain. ” and her third release, “Off With Her Tits,” is an indefinable postmodern feminist scripture. Through the macabre events, Allie expresses “really deep emotions” that a radio scriptwriter would have suppressed, she says. Her self-production ultimately allowed her to cultivate “darkly humorous and painful” ideas that strayed far from the norm. “Imagine trying to write ‘Off With Her Tits’ in a songwriting room in LA. It’s impossible. I was channeling feelings that had tormented me for years about my body shape. . I felt empowered to take out their frustration. It felt so good to satirize it. But when I sit someone down and try to explain the details of that feeling, I don’t know how to explain it. I hardly understand.”
And like other great post-punk records, the song remains a full-circle return to its dystopian roots, laden with incidental critiques of capitalism and technocracy, and full of incidental critiques of her body and It explores its relationship with the world around it. Full of her satire and wit, Allie is an agent of fame and money, criticizing the very system she covets, and with her confidence shouts out her own idiosyncrasies. Masu. “Long live Satan/At least he keeps his word/Big Brother is always away,” she gushed on “Weird World,” then on “Hardware Software,” she sings, “I’d like to bed a mountain of debt/ “I want to burn the house down” Faces on the Internet / I want to kill, kill, kill “Til my world dies” And then, on “You Slept On Me,” which demands flowers, she “gets down on one knee It’s time/Tell me why you fell asleep,” commands me. “
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The cost of this comedic admiration is not all ridicule, and The Girl Without a Face is not born solely out of a desire for authenticity. Before I fell in love with “Girl With No Face” and after my previous album “Cape God” – Co-Produced Coastline Fantasia — Allie sought to better understand her place in the pop economy. She says, “My long-term goals as a creator and as a business person started to change. There were many revelations that led her to start self-producing. [‘Girl With No Face’]. I looked at the contracts and financial statements. I was seven years into my career and wondered where my money was. I was shocked to see what I had signed. A lot of things came to mind and I was angry. this is, [decision to self-produce]. If you produce an album with someone else or write a song with someone else, you only get a third or a quarter of the royalties. From a practical point of view, I was interested in creating something with all the rights. ”
In other words, the darkly humorous “Faceless Girl” era also represents autonomy, an almost complete sonic overhaul driven by psychological, biological, and industrial-scale frustrations, and a final shift toward the self. ends with a recommitment. In her penultimate song, “Staying Power,” she says: “The world can hurt me, I don’t care/It’s because I have the staying power/Minutes or hours/I’ll be waiting, I’ve got everything” Night. ” In fact, Ally With subtle self-analysis and a serious look on her face, Allie says, indulging in jokes related to “The Girl with No Face.” She needs to find peace and quiet. I’m addicted to high-stakes situations and obsessed with overcoming challenges. ”
After all, perhaps “Faceless Girl” is both a reflection of the pop machine it turned around in, defying convention, and at the same time its complete opposite. “It’s as if if something isn’t difficult, I don’t believe in it. That creates a chaotic and noisy life. For my own health, for my life and for the next record. I hope more peace awaits me in the writing process,” she says, and finally, when asked what Allie X’s utopian record would look like, she answered, A soliloquy I concluded that’s always true: “I’ve never written a record from a place of peace. I don’t know if it’s going to be funny, and I’m afraid it won’t be interesting. We care about each other, We need pain to communicate.”
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“The Girl Without a Face” is now in theaters.
words: Otis Robinson
photograph: marcus cooper
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