GAYLETTER

I fell for Tinashe when I saw the Boss music video. I mean, this girl was eighteen, wrote a vicious song, taught herself to produce her own music, then self-directed its video. The vision and its execution left an impression. In one red-light setting, with a bright curly lion’s mane of hair, she sidles against an oversized county fair teddy bear, croons up over its head, then playfully decapitates it. And rips out its stuffing. It’s wild. Since then, she’s stayed focused, continually maturing her style.

Tinashe is twenty-three now and no longer needs the heels or hair or glam to prove that she’s grown. Nightride, released last Friday at midnight, is not child’s play. She came for every wig on this bi-coastal mess we call America. Released with a music video statement of purpose, Nightride is the accompaniment and precursor to Joyride, her upcoming sophomore album.

Her position relative to popular music in late 2016 is somewhere between Frank Ocean and Ariana Grande. Like Frank, Tinashe’s been roiling in music industry purgatory, her sophomore album suffering massive delays, her label increasingly hapless at managing her career. Both Nightride and Blonde are dark and pained, isolated (Nightride has zero features), but animated by the singer’s devotional faith in love and self-ownership. Both albums suit these suddenly darker days especially well. Like Ariana’s interstellar pop, Tinashe’s vocals pair dense production with an agile and winking sensibility. But Tinashe’s a more genuinely dangerous woman who belts out a bit more sparingly. …

The latest music video ‘Living It Up’ from THESWIMMINGPOOLS opens in a parking garage, both members of the group approaching an older BMW in their finest looks. It seems that the large hats are a trend in music video, Young Thug wore a large scale umbrella hat on his album cover… but that doesn’t mean this one is less gaggy! I was happy to see it done in a black and white manor, especially with the main musical-hook of ‘Living It Up’ crescendoing as the video opens. The ominous and sexy tone sets in quick and envelopes you swiftly.

One of the members, Christophe, told us that ‘Living It Up’ is “a love letter to Los Angeles.” In the video, the duo carries on Hollywood Blvd leaving tourists and spectators camera-clad and smiling. Everyone is happy! The duo seem to be having a great time, as do their audience, and the lyrics match the mood with the celebratory message — “You’ve got good hair / good skin / good luck / you’re living it up.” The song is very LA, in all of it’s plasticized glory that is a joke to some but a serious lifestyle to others. THESWIMMINGPOOLS are unapologetic about the city of Angels — it clearly makes them feel fucking good, attractive and like they can achieve all of their aspirations. I’m positive they’re not alone. People never want to leave California… perhaps because they, too, are living it up! Life’s too short to be pessimistic. Focus on the days your hair looks good as hell. …

The first thing I do when I get to the GAYLETTER office is (after wiping a lot of sweat off my face) sit down and open Facebook like the good millennial I suppose I am. It’s always exciting to realize I have been awake for four hours and the morning’s news might as well be something that happened two weeks ago. So much happens when I am getting my beauty sleep! It’s really fascinating how time works. So cray-cray, right? There is always something new, exciting and stupid to read on Facebook. Yesterday was a little different though.

As Frank Ocean continues to teach us, disgruntled fans are not the look. Releasing new music is vital to taming your fandom. PWR BTTM knows how to treat their fans better than any other band. Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins have had quite the year. We were thrilled to publish them in Issue 4 of GAYLETTER, and since featuring them in the mag, they’ve been written about by NPR, MTV, Pitchfork, and countless other major sources, all while on a major tour supporting the indie-emo fave, Pity Sex. Both members have extreme passion for inclusivity and spend the necessary time snapping photos with their glitter-clad fans after shows. They have an active (often politically charged) social media presence that keeps their fans engaged, interested and above all else, heard by the duo. Most importantly, they made sure every venue they played provided gender neutral restrooms for those attending their shows. …

Last week, Tom, Abi & myself went to check out the OAK SS17 presentation. We liked the clothes — a cute, very New York, and wearable direction for the brand — but the model casting was fucking correct. Abi told me to go up and get in the models faces for our GAYLETTER Snapchat (add us, queen! @gayletter) because I was gagging five feet away, so I guess he figured I had an excuse to be thirsty in their personal space.

While we were carrying and reading the fashion queens post-presentation, the models came out in the street clothes and we might have enjoyed that moment even more, considering they all got to serve it in their personal style, and needless to say, they came through. One boy stuck out in particular, because while everyone was sanctioned off in small circles, sipping their vodka tonics, he was throwing it… for his phone! I’m always in awe of kids who can give public performance for Internet content. I mean, he was lip-synching for his life… alone… against a blank wall, but he added so much color to the black and white room.

This boy turned out to be Mister Wallace, the Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based rapper. His single, ‘It Girl,‘ premiered on the FADER today, and it captured all of that energy and personality we saw at the presentation. ‘It Girl,’ off his debut EP ‘FAGGOT‘ is vibrant and full of envy-worthy looks. There must be like, five or six different looks in this video, each one more gaggable, but my favorite is the cotton, long-sleeve leotard with the cropped white coat to match. …

In one of my first dance classes, the instructor told us never to open our mouths when the choreography called for a head cast back or something of the sort. I still hear her snarling, “mouths open are ugly!” Olly Alexander, in Years & Years new music video for ‘Worship,’ completely disregards this formality. Instead, he throws his head and his mouth wide open, bringing it within inches of another man’s, in the suggestive latest music video from the electronic trio.

Worship, off of the band’s 2016 album Communion, is light on the surface, but the lyrics and video reveal a love rooted in a dark place (literally, “Gotta keep my lips shut / I’ll do what you tell me to / Cause in darkness I follow you”) that functions below. The video, taking place in a grimey parking lot and parking garage sheds light on these darker moments hidden in the song.

Throughout the video, Olly is on some kind of kick. He seems vengeful; trying to bring some form of justice to himself while an older man sits motionless in a car before him. However, he also seems horny… Olly thwarts several hot guys (the one with the mustache drove me nuts with that trade look) away from him and instead, manipulates their direction to what I assume to be the oppressive-daddy character in the car. Whether Olly is seeking vengeance or a good fuck might be not so important. Both sex and retribution are indiscernible here, mostly because, like any kind of worship, these feelings operate on the fine line between a sickness and a healing. …

My memory is pretty bad. I can’t remember names; I never even try with phone numbers, and I have one of those unconsciously narcissistic memory banks that tends to sway a lot of things in my direction (like making me the false origin of a joke). This isn’t an apology as much as it is a statement of the obvious. However, my memory slays when it comes to lyrics! It’s what usually sticks out to me in music primarily, and I dissect the instrumental later. One thing I can say, having been a fan of Blood Orange for the past few years, is that Dev Hynes masterfully composes the lyrical and the musical into one immersive listening experience that is incomparable. My head never wants to separate his words from his instrumental, instead, it completely soaks me.

In tandem with a surprise release of his third album, Freetown Sound, Dev Hynes released the video for his song  ‘Augustine,’ last Wednesday. With the help of Hyne’s retro, R&B feel,  Augustine sounds and looks like a New York not-so-far gone. The 80’s rhythm, avant-garde dancers, and shots of Hynes playing piano in an empty, sunlit dance studio produce a nostalgia ripe, with emotional undertones.  The song pays partial tribute to Saint Augustine, an African Bishop of Hippo (modern-day Annaba, Algeria), born in 354, who was a great writer, and also Nontetha, the South African prophet and seer “who fought for unity and the cessation of fighting and feuds in the [South African] region. …

I don’t listen to the radio because this is the age of the aux-cord, duh! I also don’t listen to the radio because Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are boring, but if radio stations played Megan Vice (which they should!), I would listen a helluva lot more. Her latest single, All of the Time, off her new EP out July 15th is “reminiscent of an early Janet Jackson, [it has a] Lisa Lisa Cult Jam sound.” With a steady synth beat and Vice’s sultry tone, “All of the Time” calls to be played on repeat at a pool party, or something in the sun. “I wanted these songs to take a spunkier, gutsier turn from some of my previous material… I was born at the wrong time… I should have been dancing with Downtown Julie Brown on the platform stages of Club MTV!” That said, Vice’s sound fits in perfectly with the retro synth take many alternative pop artists are taking. This new take on a synth melody strikes a nostalgic chord with Millennials whose knack for a synth record comes from a generation of parents who peaked in the 80s. I owe half of who I am to my Mom and her need to play Soft Cell’s Tainted Love more often than not…

“The album’s first single, ‘All of the Time’, is about being into someone and owning the attraction with every fiber of your being.  ‘It’s inspired by a relationship I had with a friend where there was a lot of sexual tension,’ explains Vice. …

Firstly, DonChristian is so hot. Secondly, every single look he’s wearing in his new video for “Chop” is worthy of envy. The weather is finally getting warmer and I’ve been dying to show some skin (yes, I went back to the gym!) but he’s got me dreaming of pounds of winter layering with the Telfar, Daimorf, and Vejas (who was just announced as an LMVH fashion prize semifinalist) he’s wearing. That’s great styling. But lastly, we were happy to feature DonChristian in Issue 2 when he was just establishing his roots outside of Philly. It’s always good to see a familiar face continue to turn it out!

Having not put out a single in over a year, DonChristian’s Chop is a prelude to his forthcoming debut LP. “The video is an homage to Philly, featuring the most notable Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club — and dancers from the historically Black dance company Philadanco — where I grew up alongside my mother and aunts.”

The video scarcely shows DonChristian alone. It’s a constant, four minute celebration of friendship, which gets at the central production motives. “I made it with my friend, South African producer Applesawc whom I met via Soundcloud a couple of years ago. We developed a close yet remote working relationship via Skype, and were most excited by this track, before he passed away in August. The song and video are dedicated to him. The last thing he wrote to me was ‘I just want to put this song out, man’” Chop is a catchy, great song with a sweet history. …