GAYLETTER

Over the course of Jam Rostron‘s third outing as Planningtorock, All Love’s Legal, there are thundering declarations of sexual equality, a vehement denouncement of the patriarchy, and a rallying call for the destruction of gender binaries. Heavy-handed? Perhaps. But when filtered through Rostron’s voice modulation and set to a backdrop of house-tinged drum and bass, the songs on Planningtorock’s newest album forgo didacticism for something primal, something that condemns the status quo while keeping in line with one of the most direct methods of changing people’s minds from narrow-minded bigotry: point-blank declarations of equality and justice.

In a 2014 that just saw Facebook newly allow over fifty new gender identity options, it may at first seem reductive for a record like All Love’s Legal to boast such obvious song titles such as “Misogyny Drop Dead” and “Patriarchy Over & Out.” But what sets this timely batch of songs apart from Rostron’s more mainstream, gay-baiting contemporaries is her unique approach to the music that sets the stage for the social and political content she’s putting on blast. “I’m interested in this idea of queering sonics, making non-heteronormative music,” the UK-born, Berlin-based artist said in a recent interview with Independent. Based on All Love’s Legal‘s standout title track alone, it’s clear that Rostron has fully achieved this vision, from lyrics that proudly repeat the fact that “you can’t illegalize love” to Rostron’s voice, pitch-shifted to a point where it becomes totally de-gendered. The effect is powerful: the voice attacking the patriarchy is universal, one that can’t and won’t be conformed to the gender binary that Rostron already believes limits and ultimately hurts the humans being categorized.

This breaking down of barriers that Rostron is urging for on All Love’s Legal brings to mind another recent politically-minded record: The Knife‘s Shaking the Habitual. Rostron, who worked with the duo in 2010 on the operatic, sprawling Tomorrow, in a Year, seems to have taken a page straight from Habitual’s handbook of politics, even including a reworking of “Full of Fire“ on “Let’s Talk About Gender Baby.” But where the siblings behind The Knife submerged their calls for gender and money equality in elongated, ominous synth chaos, Rostron’s style is dressed up in electronic string arrangements and a deep, danceable heartbeat that keeps each song rolling seamlessly from one to the next.

Despite powerful social change occurring all over the world in support of homosexuality, it can be difficult to dissociate ourselves from the fact that we also live in a global society that still promotes anti-gay legislation in a Russia currently hosting the Winter Olympics, where there exist at least five other countries in which open homosexuality is punishable by death, and in which American legislature can push an anti-gay bill promoting segregation between straights and gays and have it overwhelmingly pass. Is an album that so publicly advocates an abandonment of gender binaries and patriarchal thought in favor of sexual fluidity, openness and equality, then, so truly out of touch?

All Love’s Legal is now available on iTunes. Watch the video for ‘Human Drama‘ below: