Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Roselove and the abstract emotional storytelling of "marionette"

American Robb 7:22:00 PM "marionette", abstractions, alt pop, art punk, indie rock, musician, New York, philadelphia, photographer, Roselove, shoegaze, visual artist, writer

"i know there are cities where the vaudeville stops / can i stay with you after the vaudeville show? / i don’t want to think about what culture costs / can i perform all the poems that your keen eyes sought?..."

The slap in your face contortions of "marionette" by New York / Philadelphia based musician, photographer, visual artist, writer Roselove touched me right away like a window shattering a couple of houses down. If shards of glass were to cut my arm and draw blood in the shape of Rorschach tests, the red blotches might make me think of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and David Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide". That is in fact what "marionette" made me think of although I couldn't tell you exactly why. I think there are some melodic things happening at the very beginning of the song that harken to faint Donavan melodies (or his melodies if you squint) and Roselove's vocal countenance, one that feels at times androgynous, artfully emotional, and a bit sideways. The sense of storytelling cuts deep but off-kilter, which may be (to me) a memoric reference to the Bowie song. I know that at first the song intrigued more than anything else but upon repeated listens, the song sonically, lyrically sunk in deeply and I thought of an artistic attitudinal amalgam of artists like Circuit des Yeux, Lola Marsh, Stella Donnelly, Julia Holter, Nico.

Please read LINER NOTES from Roselove about the wonderful "marionette":

[Musically, Marionette was inspired by the indie sleaze pop revival scene in London and the shoegaze scene in Philadelphia. I wrote this song about a couple of topics. Acutely, it is about feeling overlooked as a transgender woman in the media industry. More broadly, it is about the growing epidemic of loneliness in the United States and how this disproportionately affects working class individuals, because we are often systemically corralled into desolate locations and face social discrimination in denser, livelier areas, which tend to be more posh. I wanted to write a song about these issues from my perspective as a woman, because I feel that male loneliness is disproportionately covered in media due to male privilege in general, as well as radicalized, misogynistic, bad actors such as incels forcing us to see these issues from a male perspective. I believe that loneliness is something we all experience and I wanted to create something that imbue my listeners with a feeling of solidarity and community, while still holding space for the grief that we feel as a result of loneliness. Also, the song is sexy!]

-Robb Donker Curtius