Moonlit Mourning and Radiant Hope in TRAИƧA

 
 

review by Chimera Mohammadi

TRAИƧA’s first song, “I. Midnight Moon Pool (Womb of the Soul),” is a sonic dream of birth, an ode to the raw creative power that defines the act of gender transition. This first glittering wave pulls us deep into the celestial sea of grief, spirituality, and hope that constitutes TRAИƧA. The album unites a dazzling array of newer Queer talent, cultural titans, and indie darlings, including Sade, André 3000, ANOHNI, Adrianne Lenker, Devendra Banhart, Perfume Genius, Sam Smith, Clairo, and many more, resulting in a stylistically diverse yet cohesive body of work. It’s divided into eight sections, each thematized by its first track. It is at once a tribute to trans musical pioneer SOPHIE, whose passing galvanized the creation of the album, a guide through grief, and an exploration of trans identity and resistance. The music spans ethereal meditations, dirges, disco-infused celebrations, rebel cries, and more, an eclectic blend that manages conversation rather than dissonance. Songs like Niecy Blues’ “It Is Over Now?” dive into open wounds that are subsequently sewn up in tracks such as Laura Jane Grace’s “Surrender Your Gender,” which demands self-actualization without concession. Songs like the cover of Low’s “Point of Disgust” by Alan Sparhawk and Perfume Genius linger in quiet moments of pain which evaporate in the sunshine of tracks like “I Feel Free” by SPARKLE DIVISION and Pepper Mashay. Throughout TRAИƧA, dual rivers of mourning and creativity converge to create a healing current of liberation that listeners can ride all the way from the Womb of the Soul to Reinvention while they dream of safer worlds. 

Dig into the album at transa.world.

Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville, A Group Exhibition Curated by Devendra Banhart @ Nicodim Los Angeles

Curated by Devendra Banhart, “A prayer for my four-to-six nuclear families, for my ever-expanding universe of friends and lovers, for consciousnesses that may or may not exist beyond our postmodern El Dorados and Shangri-Las where dead dreams go to die twice:

May this sea moss gel cool the fire within in me that burns with unfiltered desire for epiphany in a pornographic desert;

May we all find a Six Flags for our unmet oral and spiritual needs;

May we all discover a Cartier diamond bracelet in the Bloomin’ Onion we snuck into the hot yoga session at the Cheesecake Factory;

May we all find comfort within our own place in Margaritaville—that sacred temple, that archetype for a freedom that exists somewhere between legitimacy and artifice that urges us to leave behind the very sacred temple that is selling us the dream to leave it all behind;

May we all attend the vernissage for Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville and bask in the ordinary magic, this orgy of authenticity buried in the most profane of structures.”

–Adapted from Out of Body: The Bortz Metzger Memoirs, R. Driblette, editor. Penguin Books Ltd, 2002

Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville is the top floor of the romantic wing of the capitalist nightmare, a fever dream manifested during a midday nap on a bed of ashwagandha-tipped nails with an ecstatic, honest, and truthful international coterie of artists, many of whom have never shown in the United States before.

In celebration of the closing, noted, lubricated, hole-istic tantric gurus Devendra Banhart and Ben Lee Ritchie Handler will lead the gallery in a guided meditation. Please bring a yoga mat and a clear head. The event will double as release party for a limited-edition t-shirt for the exhibition. July 29 from 3–6. Space is limited, please arrive a bit early.

Immaculate Heart of Margaritaville is on view through July 29th at Nicodim, 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, #160, Los Angeles, CA 90021