I want to explain to outsiders that the people where I come from arent beyond hope and reason , says EMA, I want this record to bridge a divide. The album is unique in its mingling of gender politics with American working-class anxiety. The voices we hear in these songs druggy, surly societal outcasts; Byronic nihilists bringing down fire speak to a kind of rebellion that s typically reserved for men, and the archetype of the dirtbag teenage boy dominates the album. Yet EMA claims some of that same dirtbag alienation for women a woman who swallowed a scumbag teen boy whole, as EMA puts it and uses it to interrogate both her own vulnerability and how male violence shapes the world, as on the anthemic Aryan Nation. The result is a deeply personal, confrontational, but ultimately redemptive album from a quintessentially American artist at the peak of her form. A Magnum Opus!
