FEATURE: Spotlight: Dorian Electra — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Dorian Electra

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THERE are those artists…

making consistently interesting and amazing music who maybe do not get the exposure that they deserve. That is certainly the case when it comes to Dorian Electra. They are a Houston-born singer and songwriter. Their debut studio album, Flamboyant, was released in 2019. That was followed by their second studio album, My Agenda, in 2020. The stunning Electra is known for their non-conforming fashion, Queer aesthetics, and original and memorable Pop sound. Electra is genderfluid and uses they/them pronouns. I am going to get to some recent press around the album, Fanfare. That was released on 6th October (the vinyl is available to pre-order). Whilst it has won a smattering of very positive reviews, I feel more people need to hear the album and offer their thoughts. Before that, I feel it is important to go to that debut album and some of the interviews around that. In fact, I will bring in The Guardian’s talk with Dorian Electra from July 2019. They had released their amazing debut. Getting a lot of people talking. Quite right too. Flamboyant was definitely one of the key debut albums from 2019:

“Invariably, queer pop stars worship David Bowie, and Dorian Electra is no different. “My dad got me into Bowie from a really young age,” they say. “I looked up to androgynous rock stars.” What’s less common is worshipping Bono. “He was one of my heroes as a kid. I know, funny: everyone hates him. But I really loved him, and used to dress up as him. That was one of my first experiences in what I guess you could call drag, but I would call dressing up. I performed the song Vertigo, just for my family – I drew on a little beard with my stepmom’s eyeliner.”

And so, with a home performance of a U2 song, Electra set off on the way to becoming the most lively and witty new pop star of 2019. Assigned female at birth but now defining as gender-fluid, they are about to release their debut album: a brilliant collection of ultra-synthetic, cartoonishly masculine pop, delivered wearing a perfect pencil moustache.

Dorian and Electra are the first two names on their birth certificate, along with two more that they ask me not to divulge (along with their age). “I’ll tell all about everything else!” And boy, do they – their diagnosed attention deficit disorder triggers more than 10,000 words down the phone during our conversation, sentences constantly interrupted with a newer, even more interesting thought.

Electra grew up in Houston to an artist mother and a father who performed covers in a rock band after work: “He’s not the best singer, but he’s got the moves.” The couple split when Electra was five; after that, their mother dated women. “When I was eight, I was like: ‘So this friend of yours is always staying over, are you a lesbian?’ She was like: ‘Yeah, honey, I am.’ And I was like: ‘That’s OK.’ I knew those other options were open to me.”

As a kid, they felt “really androgynous: I wasn’t into the things girls were into, but I hated sports, or playing with GI Joe. I always identified with the word kid more than girl or boy.” In high school, they would have crushes on boys, “but I didn’t feel like a girl liking a guy. Love stories in movies were very alienating to me.”

One of their teachers, an out, “Oscar Wilde type figure” who also worked as the coach of the debating team, beguiled Dorian and the group of “nerdy boys” they fell in with. “We were … I’m hesitant to say the word brainwashed, because that takes away my agency, and he did come from a good place. But basically I was brainwashed to think the state was evil, that you can’t use government to do anything good, because it is an institution of force.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Dorian Electra in concert at Elsewhere, New York, May 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Adela Loconte/REX/Shutterstock

The teacher was a libertarian, and his politics shaped Electra’s whole youth: one of their earliest viral hits was a song called I’m In Love With Friedrich Hayek, a ballad to the economist who influenced Reagan and Thatcher’s free-market ideology. “I watch a lot of documentaries about people coming out of cults, because I really relate to that,” Electra says. “Where it’s a charismatic leader, of young impressionable people, who are all very passionate and want to change the world. And then being led by this charisma into these ideas that now I’m really embarrassed by.”

For Electra, flamboyance is a symptom of camp, an “inherently queer” state. “Camp sees outside of the status quo, and also has a sense of humour, to cope with it, that’s knowing but also sincere.” No wonder they are about to go on tour with Charli XCX, another pop star who walks that line. Electra recently appeared in a music video by one of the masters of modern camp, Paris Hilton, and they celebrate Hilton’s “over-the-top self-awareness, in a camp way: her being a parody of herself, but a really savvy businessperson in her branding. The coolest thing about her is that she still has the finger on the pulse of where she stands culturally, whereas you see a lot of people like that lose touch, and think they are still perceived as the person they were back then.”

Like a vaping Freud, it is tempting to do some armchair psychology: when Electra dresses up as a matador, a gladiator and a boxer for the song Man to Man, is it to hide their vulnerability? “I wonder how much of me loving these masculine things – dressing up like a knight or a cowboy – how much of these things are not good, and maybe a product of my own internalised misogyny,” they ponder. “But I do feel very empowered and strong. I’m always so grateful for the support system I’ve had emotionally, and being able to be who I am. Maybe my work offers that to other people – maybe it resonates because they are finding strength in reclaiming the things they were bullied by, or were told they couldn’t be a part of. I can be a gladiator in a cultural sense.” In that sense at least, Dorian Electra is slaying”.

Before coming to a review for Fanfare, I want to look at one interview that was released in 2020. Dorian Electra was talking about their second album, My Agenda. Someone who was on a lot more people’s radar – compared to their debut a couple of years before -, this METAL interview is really interesting. We learn some really interesting things about Electra. I have selected some parts of the interview that particularly caught my eye:

“You are an artist who has seen great success in this digital era thanks to your playful hyperpop and immersive music video worlds. How has the Internet influenced the birth and life of Dorian Electra?

I started making music videos online in high school and uploading them to YouTube. It was really on MySpace that I first felt I could make music videos, have an audience and online community. Having that audience and connection to people through the Internet gave me a sense of purpose. Otherwise, it was just making a video on my dad’s camera with some friends when I was in middle school or earlier.
Audience and purpose play a large part in the work that I do and in feeling like it’s connected to a community. The Internet absolutely has been a huge part of that. As an independent artist too, the Internet has been so powerful to get my work out there totally independently, to distribute it, have it reach people, and for them to share it.

Awesome. Watching your videos, I felt like you expressed a political activist side from when you were very young. I guess you are tired of talking about the “I’m in love with Friedrich Hayek” video that launched your career. But I can see your opinions have changed a lot since then, and I’d love to hear you talk about that.

I don’t believe in a lot of the same politics that I used to believe in. I used to identify as libertarian and I was brainwashed by a teacher in high school into that ideology. Since then, I went to college, read Karl Marx and a whole bunch of books that opened my mind. Now I identify as a leftist, and the educational aspect is still something that’s core to my work as an artist. That’s something that’s always interested me: how to take complex ideas and put them into a catchy, accessible format that is potentially accessible to anybody. My work about the history of the clitoris, sexuality, gender – all of those videos were also early work that I think of as ‘before,’ but it was influential for me. I still think about my music in a lot of the same ways even though it’s not as explicitly educational.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford (SN37 Agency)

That’s cool. So, your new deluxe version of the album My Agenda made me think of this linguistic slip, a mistake, that cisgender people make when they’re talking about trans and non-binary people’s gender by saying agenda rather than gender, which I find really funny. I don’t know if that was something that you’re referencing, but I want to move our conversation towards talking about whether this album is potentially a response to anti-trans discourses, despite the fact your music and art go far beyond gender identity. I want to know more about this activist side of you that comes out in the new album.

Definitely, this album is about a lot of things, but it is also about gender, sexuality, and particularly masculinity, like my previous album, Flamboyant. It also extends beyond that and goes more political. It explores the manosphere that includes men’s rights, incels, men going their own way – those kinds of online communities that reject modern feminism and want to see a return to traditional gender roles and traditional masculinity, who feel like their identities are somehow under attack. That often gets coupled with other forms of reactionary politics. These things are present in our culture but are often swept under the rug, misunderstood or written off rather than analysed. Yet, those strange political strains helped allow Donald Trump to be elected.

These cis white heterosexual men feel disenfranchised, disempowered, and like the world is against them. The solution is to stop and think why those people feel that way, what is causing them to take on hateful ideas like anti-immigration or racism, or other forms of right-wing populism. The left could be better at this. We need to look at the causes of those ideologies in order to be able to combat them. It has to start from a place of empathy and understanding in order to be able to reach out and ultimately hope to heal, or convert people. I think that it’s actually very important to face head-on the things we don’t agree with rather than staying in echo chambers. Right now we’re seeing increasing political polarisation and social atomisation, where we all feel separate and fractured as a culture.

So, I think that that’s my political calling – to look at things critically but also with empathy, even towards something that is hateful and you don’t agree with. We have to understand the causes to be able to combat it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford (SN37 Agency)

That’s so important. Thank you so much for going into detail about that. I’m going to try and intersperse slightly more light-hearted questions as we also cover the more political side of your work. So, do you think that humour is a good way to introduce change?

Absolutely, I think humour is one of the most powerful political tools. It can be used for good and for bad. And it’s very important to be aware of how we’re wielding that irony. It can be used as a political tool on a personal level to talk about gender identity, sort of poking fun at things that have been viewed as sacred, and sort of showing the historical social contingency of some of these things that are thought to be natural or permanent, like gender identity and so forth. I think humour is a healthy way to challenge people with the same ideas and introduce them to new ones.

There is a lot of ambiguity around the similarities and differences between you as a person and the characters you perform. Talking about your song Career Boy, you admitted you can overwork yourself to some extent. Did the pandemic aggravate that?

Yes, I think that my relationship with work has changed a lot in the past year and a half. When you’re forced to slow down and your work is reduced to what’s on the computer screen in front of you, it makes you look at it in a different way. Particularly when your work includes running around, travelling, doing errands, etc. – all of those were cut out of everyday life. I’m still feeling the effects of it and readjusting whilst also trying to find ways that I can relax and do things that are good for me that I didn’t do before the pandemic. But I was extremely busy for the majority of 2020, I didn’t take any time off. I was working on getting my album out and doing music videos. So, I definitely still relate to the stuff I said about Career Boy. But I’m trying to change that and challenge myself to look at things in a healthier way.

What are the things that you’re finding useful to unplug and relax at the moment?

I started listening to audiobooks, which is funny – I never did that before. I’ve joined a reading group but I keep questioning what I did with my time before.

I read recently that young people, my age, in their early twenties, are starting to get botox because of the way it is talked about on TikTok. It made me think of the conflation of youth, rebellion and the future – these contemporary ideas make it appear so normal. Where do you stand?

It’s a hard one to say. I think people should have the freedom to do whatever they want with their bodies. But also, the mounting pressure can be unhealthy. I’ve thought about the same things. To me, trans people undergoing feminisation surgery put it in perspective. You should have the power to use technology to shape your body but do it with an awareness of the social pressures. Josh just wrote an amazing article. He’s been doing an experiment on himself that’s very 4Chan, to boost testosterone levels. He chews this gum and does exercises to define his jaw called mewing. It’s like he’s transitioning, but he’s transitioning to be more masculine as a cis male. He’s mansitioning.

I wholeheartedly support all of my trans friends who make use of those services. I am lucky I can disconnect from those social pressures, particularly because my face is not on my work. My final question is: I love the artistic trajectory of the film director Jean-Luc Godard, who started by renewing the art form and then went incredibly experimental aged 80. Is this what we can expect from you?

I hope that I am always changing and evolving as an artist and pushing myself forward. I want to try my hand at more pop before delving into the more experimental, although to me that is a false dichotomy. Personally, I find [myself in] that happy medium. Pop is catchy or memorable – it can be experimental production-wise, but it’s more of an ethos than a sound. I want to break down the dichotomy”.

I can’t find any print interviews with Dorian Electra about their new album. In any case, the reviews are all very positive – and they give you an idea of what the album is about. This is what The Line of Best Fit noted in their review of the fabulous Fanfare:

“Though, to be fair, their first two albums had already made that pretty clear. 2019’s Flamboyant was a thumping, glittering pickaxe to masculinity, paving the way for the opulent absurdity of 2020’s My Agenda. Their eclectic sound earned them the slightly ham-fisted term ‘hyperpop’ alongside the likes of Charli XCX and SOPHIE, but really their sound is resistant to any such labelling. Spanning time, space, and several sticky dance floors, their music offers a cutting social commentary set to a miscellanea of noise cranked up high. On Fanfare, it is parasocial relationships and internet-inflicted brain rot on the chopping block for dissection.

One thing that’s always been impressive about Electra is their range: their discography is a racket of oscillating vocal contortions thrashing against snarling guitars, glitching production and stomach-punching bass. Fanfare is much the same story, with Electra able to keep a strong enough grip on all the disparate parts to stop true chaos ensuing. “Sodom and Gomorrah” is the undeniable standout, channelling all the sultry power of Spearsian 00s pop with added guitar crunch. Inspired by the divine destruction of two sinful cities, the track is a hymn to queer reclamation – or, in Electra’s words, “a bratty, slutty, sexy song.”

It’s followed by “Puppet”: a characteristically bawdy cut, its acutely left-of-field instrumental burying a slightly mangled rendition of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” that, somehow, actually works. Later, the five and a half minute epic “Yes Man” laments the blind, mindless praise feeding parasocial relationships. At the outset it appears comparatively stripped back – but fear not, it soon descends into a bouncing echo chamber of sinister laughter and Electra’s pleads to “cut the fucking fanfare.”

Lyrically, Electra has an established practice of running sentiments of various sincerity through a Gen Z translator. It’s how we’re left with “touch grass / shake that ass” on their anthem for the chronically online (“Touch Grass”); on “Manmade Horrors,” the ruin of man is summarised with similar derision (“bought a Che Guevara shirt from Zara / on sale”). While, for the most part, Electra has happily rejected the trend for putting a thousand fried voice notes on an album, “Lifetime” does offer an aggrieved tip on the most ecologically conscious way to dispose of coffee grounds.

Their satirical, ludicrous sense of humour runs throughout the record, informing more than just the lyrics. For instance, the outro on the otherwise swaggering “anon” bravely asks the question, “what would happen if you put a drum beat in a blender?” Elsewhere, “Warning Signs” ends with Electra singing in the round over a building instrumental and marching drums, an unexpected recall to the emo classics. At almost every turn this record has a new surprise to offer, showing off an artist that can truly turn their hand to anything.

Fanfare is technically a matured sound from Electra’s sophomore outing, if only because there’s less literal screaming this time round. Nothing quite reaches the visceral, brain-rattling energy of “Ram It Down,” for instance, but that still leaves more than enough scope for Electra’s kaleidoscopic vision. Their third album is a triumph of creativity and organised chaos, confirming their status as a cult sensation”.

A truly remarkable album from an artist that everyone should know about. I am going to keep an eye on Dorian Electra, as I think they are primed for mainstream success! It is hard for gender-fluid artists to get as much visibility at the front as other artists. It is quite difficult to break through in that sense. The media not paying as much attention to gender-fluid and non-binary artists as they perhaps should. Let’s hope that this changes! I only recently discovered Dorian Electra. I have been hooked on their music. I love the interviews and live performances. I know they have an L.A. show soon. After that, or into next year, maybe Electra will come visit the U.K. There are fans over here that would love to see them! One of the most compelling artists of the modern times, more focus needs to be on them. Fanfare is one of the best albums of this year without a doubt. One that you are hit by on the first visit. When you pass through after that, different moments and songs reveal treasures and new layers. In any case, the wonderful Dorian Electra is a sensation that is very much…