Macy Rodman’s Electro-pop vivarium of ‘Unbelievable Animals’

Arts

Sep 17

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The infamous 1995 VMA’s “feud” between Courtney Love and Madonna lingers in my subconscious as an oblique yet fitting framework for which to view Unbelievable Animals, the sonically sprawling queer entanglement breakup album by Brooklyn nightlife luminary, underground punk-performance chanteuse, critically acclaimed Caitlyn Jenner impersonator, and recently coronated trans pop czarina Macy Rodman. The electricity that crackled between those two blonde legends and their assumed personas on that fateful evening, and the ideological friction that surrounded them, is very much alive on this amorphous, pulsating array of subterranean bangers. Released through Shamir’s Accidental Popstar Records, Unbelievable Animals was written in a prolific spurt of inspiration to mourn the loss of a relationship. The resulting twelve tracks are a prismatic swirl of divergent millennial motifs, glued together with hot spit and stardust, fastened with scraps of red carpet and flayed shreds of celebrity skin, encompassing a bygone world of TRL countdowns and Jolly Rancher flavored hookups at Hot Topic. Simultaneously, the album imagines a revisionist history of late nineties, early noughties FM Radio, in which the parameters of pop music are gleefully destabilized, the FCC has been infiltrated by butt pirates, and Diva Plavalaguna is dominating the charts with her new noisecore record about interspecies orgies.

Rodman is a spirited multi-hyphenate who careens artfully and chaotically (in true Saggitarian fashion) between attempts at categorization: industrial club sorceress one moment, caustic comedienne behind the cult favorite podcast Nymphowars the next. This innate propensity for reinvention (or spontaneous mutation) feels spiritually aligned with the trajectory of Queen Madge, with a strong emphasis on the boundary-pushing electronica of her Ray of Light and Music eras. Early album highlight “Luckiest Girl in the World” is a trip-hop odyssey dripping in dystopian Y2K glamor, refracting numerous shades of ultraviolet through Rodman’s sensual sneer. “It sounds like it could be on the original soundtrack for The Craft” a friend pondered aloud, with a beatific grin on his face, before hitting his vape pen once again.

Unbelievable Animals Album Artwork — *Unbelievable Animals* Album Artwork

Indeed, there is a vast constellation of nostalgias on display throughout Unbelievable Animals, which speaks to Rodman’s deft navigation of the American pop-cultural landscape. “Groovy” is a space age cocktail lounge number, awash in absinthe vapors and the gleam of gigantic lava lamps, punctuated by Austin Powers dialogue and a spectacularly louche saxophone solo. The high-fructose schoolgirl chants of “Sweet Turns Sour” recall the slickly mechanized bubblegum of Sneaker Pimps, while lead single “Love Me” is a churning Studio 54 heartbreak anthem, where Macy prowls the discoteque high and dry, wet and wild, mascara streaked, stroboscopic, defiantly dancing on her own.

The impassioned pleas of “Joshua'' reach a feral fever pitch, as Rodman’s malleable snarl ventures to transcend the limits of anatomy and identity in an attempt to make her lover return. The most poignant lyricism occurs on crystalline power bottom ballad “Film” which charts the dissolution of a cinephilic romance: “We had a blast at ‘The House That Jack Built’ makin’ out in front of IFC/Just you and me” she reminisces, with an acerbic resignation that brings to mind the world-weary insights of Marianne Faithfull. Elsewhere, the feel-good rebound jam “Rock N’ Roll Gay Guy” warmly evokes the unpredictable potential of modern queer intimacies, in all their gooey splendor.

I first saw Rodman perform at a 24 hour DIY gathering at DRTY SMMR in 2019. Emerging from the sweaty masses in a leather catsuit and a riot grrrl pixie cut, she immediately commanded the attention of the room before launching into a spasmodic and unhinged rendition of her song “Greased Up Freak Pt. 1”. The crowd went ballistic, a manic tangle of limbs grasping at her kinetic silhouette. On Unbelievable Animals, Macy Rodman is undeniably still greasy and still freaky, with a bit of showgirl polish and the wisdom of heartbreak thrown in for good measure, as if Ziegfield Follies was doing a limited engagement at the Continental Baths. She has inherited the compact mirror that Courtney Love threw so devilishly at Madonna many moons ago, emerging in it’s reflection as a post-pop provocateur crafting ex-boyfriend bops with universal appeal, rewiring the ordinances of the animal kingdom in the process.

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Kamikaze Jones is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and amateur porn detective currently based in Connecticut.

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