Transfemme indie rocker Shaylee taps into the Americana blue collar soul searching on "Piss Dirt"

AP Track Review

From the onset, the moving track Piss Dirt by Shaylee taps iconic buttons in your brain. My synapses firing full tilt having to do with past remembrances. Knowingly or psychically Shaylee has called upon the ghosts of 1960's tortured youth culture sounds. Within the tom tom beat and big sort of western surf rock guitars there are hints of songs like (1964's) "Dead Man's Curve" written by the iconic Brian Wilson, Artie Kornfeld, Roger Christian and Jan Berry. There are the anthemic strident passionate searching blue collar sounds of Bruce Springsteen too. There is the sense of James Dean as the rebel teenager. It is a heady mix. A sort of hybrid blend having to do with navigating through life from the outside of the mainstream. This big vast Americana sound with a sense of the besieged grasping onto hope with wide eyed wonder is the perfect framework (really) for Shaylee's aesthetic and mission. 

Shaylee is the musical monker of transfemme multi-instrumentalist / singer-songwriter Elle Archer. She produces her "power punk pop" tunes herself in a DIY fashion. Her songs are deeply personal about her journey. About Piss Dirt she offers:  

“Gender is performative work. Every action, every movement, every word is loaded with meaning that we either don’t think twice about, or think much more than twice about. My living nightmare was grinding through workday after workday, one dead-end relationship after another, all in a gender role that fit me like a square peg in a round hole. 

I wanted out, but I didn’t know where I could go. All I knew was that something was coming, something was near, that there was this explosive inevitability inside me that was always on the teetering edge of something just out of reach. 

That’s what I wrote “Piss Dirt” about. It’s a trans working class ballad about living in a body that doesn’t feel like your own, living a life that doesn’t feel like your own, experiencing trauma and having it not even hit you until later when you’ve gained access to those feelings for the first time. 

I wrote it on the plane to Portland the last time I visited before moving there, where I would inevitably begin my transition. This was the first song I recorded in its entirety there. My old roommate Amelia played glockenspiel on it, too. It’s very much a product of that particular period in my life when I was beginning to crack my shell open but was still stuck in the in-between, before I found a performance that suited me.”

I have yet to delve into more of Shaylee's art but I am a sucker for the sound she has created on Piss Dirt. I love it. 

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Robb Donker

THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

Shaylee is the brainchild of Elle Archer, a transfemme multi-instrumentalist and prolific singer-songwriter. Her songs are multi-layered, densely emotive affairs with wide-ranging influences, a homespun and energetic sound she calls power pop punk. Recording everything herself, Elle's songs function as diary entries, deeply personal and honest in their upfront lyricism that remains relatable to a wide audience. The band's live shows are dynamic, punky, and explosive, with extended guitar solos and intense, ferocious queer energy on display, a far cry from the ethereal and theatrical post-rock of their first record "Bring It out of Me", which was recorded years ago before Elle ever came out. Their exciting and youthful sound is representative of a brave new lease on life, the sound of a resounding catharsis after emerging after years of private pain.