Deviant Dispatch: Clara Joy
The NYC singer-songwriter's songs are stones aimed at the goliaths of the world.
Hello!
I hope everyone is not going stir-crazy. This new self-quarantined life is hard to get used to. As I expected, more and more people are posting about live streams every day. Here’s one that got announced after I sent out my events newsletter earlier this week that I just had to tell you about. Fuck the rules! it’s my newsletter!
Hole Pics
When: Saturday 8pm EST
Where: @holepicsnyc on Instagram
What: Hole Pics is a monthly party produced by MTHR THRSA, one of BK’s newer faces and best performers. She’s a bearded queen whose aesthetic could be called avant-guard at best and lazy at worst with one of the funniest Instagram stories around. Her party is equally unhinged, and this time features her longtime collaborator Brenda (Mx. Nobody 2019) and one of my fave Instagram queers Soo Intoit. Baby Bowrich, PRFCT LVR, and Anne Cuntyhamm will also perform. Expect a group number and lots of references to MTHR THRSA eating shit.
How Much: free but Venmo the girls
The following post is about Clara Joy, one of my fave NYC musicians.
Everyone is cutting back social interactions. We’re pairing down what we’re spending on in anticipation of work being slow. We’re wearing exclusively PJs and other loungewear as we wait for forces bigger than us (CDC, The Government, Miss Roni) to inform our next move. No one knows the power of minimalism and the scariness of the world like NYC singer/songwriter Clara Joy.
Clara makes music in the bare-bones tradition of Frankie Cosmos and Kimya Dawson, but also counts Bob Dylan as an influence. Her songs are matter-of-fact tales of life as a teenager, sentimental with flashes of ironic humor.
Her shows (some of whom I’ve booked) bring out scores of fellow teens clutching beers and puffing on Juuls before quietly sitting down when Clara starts to play. In those moments, she feels like a prophet for our times (wow intense).
Her shit makes me calm, even now. Imagine!! Her sometimes bleak and always honest viewpoint fits nicely with this current spiral we’re going in, but her serene singing and guitar strumming keep me tethered to sanity.
in a post-Juno world, there’s no shortage of people making twee music, but few inject it with the gravitas of Clara. On her takedown of the debut Diet Cig album, the writer Quinn Morland describes what indie pop needs to do well to succeed. “The strongest songwriters provide a snow globe-sized glimpse into their world. The subject matter can be as simple as a rainy day spent inside building a diorama or as complex as an existential crisis, but for these stories to communicate any value they need to be vivid, deliberate, and fleshed-out by perspective.”
Clara’s perspective as a young New Yorker is clear: the world is ruled by big systems that disregard the little man. She’s the David, her music is the slingshot and the rock aimed at Goliah.
No one needs telling that 2020 is filled with Goliaths that need a good thumping. As is the indie way, Clara keeps her aimed focused on the specters that are the most familiar. Songs like “Dropout” take a wry look at the current college system is a circus of privilege instead of education (“Did you get your care package yet?”). “Radical Chic” talks about the craven marketing of feminism under capitalism. “Never Tell” could be about having a secret gay romance, while “Body on the Sidewalk” talks about general malaise.
The vastness of these scary ideas is contrasted with the smallness of Clara’s sound: just her plainspoken singing and strummed guitar, occasionally a keyboard or drum machine. There are flashes of humor as well. On “Graduation” Clara sings “the only way that I got through it is by cheating and taking Vyvanse.”
Her most prophetic song is “Goodbye Spaceship”, the closing song from her latest release Far From Here. She calls it an album, but I maintain that a 5-7 song release is NOT an album no matter how many DIY musicians insist otherwise. “Goodbye Spaceship” is sci-fi tale of an Earth ruined beyond repair. The air is poisonous and the sun has gotten hotter. Now humans are in space, unable to take off their spacesuits to even hold hands. It’s a fantasy of a dark future that feels real as I peer at friends through screens while in self-isolation. “Everything we used to know I’d gone” she sings, and this rock from her sling hits right in the gut.
You can listen to Clara Joy’s music on Spotify/Apple Music/ect but to REALLY support her you should buy her songs on her Bandcamp. Today (Friday) Bandcamp is waving their normal 15% cut of digital sales in order to support musicians affected by Miss Roni, so now is really the time!!!!