PREMIERE Female Gaze, "Today, Satan"
Out of the Polaroid haze with Female Gaze; press photos appear courtesy of the artists.
The journey and corresponding experiences take us to wild places on the planet and along the roadmaps that dot the paths within our own minds. The inner observations and dialogues we have in attempts to tether and anchor ourselves to the grounding of stabilization, assertation, and the full realization surrounding the gestalt of who we are, what we are, what we want and everything we sure as hell don’t want. These, and many more, are all elements in the chronicles of Tucson’s revered trio Female Gaze.
On the follow-up to 2024’s Tender Futures: Nelene DeGuzman, Kevin Conklin, and Nicky David Cobham-Morgese deliver their heaviest and biggest record to date. Nelene recorded the album during her third trimester of pregnancy where the compounded pains and anxieties of the known and unknown challenges of bringing a little one into a world in ruin loomed large in the artist’s mind, body, and spirit. All of this and more factors into the album’s tenebrous textures and moods. Whereas the previous cycle offered an opportunity to observe life through the arbitrary and evocative approach to entertaining a multitude of varying conceptual directions —Linea Nigra moves beyond the drawn and defined lines that serve as a barrier to our most natural, raw, vulnerable and totally activated self.
On the debut of “Today, Satan”, DeGuzman sends out a smoldering slow burner where heavy sentiments are mulled about inside the safety and sanctuary of the inner chambers devoted to deep, serious introspection. Echoes of proto-doom metal mavens and dusted 90s provocateurs can be detected in the smoky and blinding haze. Nelene, along with Kevin and Nicky soldier together through the fog machine of mental quandaries, galloping into the dense fade of clouds and the ensuing maelstrom of miasma and muddled misery.
“Today, Satan” takes the listener to the breaking point that teeters on the edge of reason. Nelene expresses the fight, flight, or flagrant fouls that are found when contending with insufferable situations, and suspect individuals. Female Gaze conveys that overwhelming sense of striving to contain the true feelings and correlating incendiary semantics that simmer and stew, like a pressure cooker pushed past the limit of its holding capacity. DeGuzman allows those feelings to tumble, ferment, and fester into the channels where caustic confrontations feel all but inevitable. “Today, Satan is the instigating moment where the limits of tolerance are pushed to their most illogical extremes. The song begs the question of whether or not this is the day and/or moment to unleash the torrents of verbal hellfire that lie in wait from within even the most mild manner presenting of personalities.
Nelene DeGuzman of Female Gaze shared thoughts on the song “Today, Satan” and the inspirations that impacted the new album Linea Nigra:
In formation with Female Gaze; press photos appear courtesy of the artists.
As an eternal pushover I am often daydreaming about moments where I really might speak my mind and say or do something absolutely devastating. Personally, I basically never actually do or say the thing but it feels so good to imagine digging your heels into some incredibly deserved cruelty.
“Today Satan” is that internal dialogue between the urge to feed that rage but then maybe having some small, empathetic sensible voice laying out a PowerPoint about why you should definitely Not Do That but then the rage creeps back in and it’s just so delicious and tempting you can’t help but fantasize about giving in.
The faces of Female Gaze forming out of the evening atmospheres; press photo courtesy of the artists.
We were making Linea Nigra in the last trimester of my pregnancy. I think we started recording at the beginning of my last trimester and finished up mastering just a week before I gave birth. I was processing so many feelings in my transition to motherhood and while there were definitely some of the kind of tender, gentle feelings everyone tells you that you’ll feel, I also felt visceral, raw and alive in the most animalistic way. A hormonal fever dream of sorting through fears of labor and birth while staring down the seemingly impossible task of mothering while the world is on fire.
Pregnancy and motherhood was and continues to be, for me, a deeply primal experience, the most connected to my instinctive, inner primordial self that I’ve ever felt. I felt everything tenfold. The experience of becoming a mother was staggering, beautiful and connected me to my most elemental experience of existing. It’s intense. So I made an album about that experience– the transitional experience leading up to birth. The fear, the dread, the awe, the physical transformation.
Female Gaze’s new album Linea Nigra arrives Ocotober 23 via Fort Lowell Records.