Have you ever scratched a rash until it bled? That is what listening to cumgirl8 feels like a Post-Punk Industrial Gothic group sure to send you through a teenage temper tantrum vortex. Members Veronika Vilim (guitar), Chase Lombardo (drums), Lida Fox (bass), and Avishag Rodrigues (guitar) describe themselves as a ‘sex positive amoeba entity,’ using music, film, fashion, and publishing to wake the world up to their ‘Greta Thunberg Fever Dream.’ Since setting a new Post-Punk standard with their self-titled cumgirl8 2020 debut EP, cumgirl8 is back on October 4, 2024, with a debut album through 4AD called the 8th cumming. Cumgirl8 once again invites you to throw a fit with them- back to nostalgic recklessness and freedom to disrupt a world you did not build.
The best way to describe this listening experience is a symphony of pain and catharsis, whereby elements of Techno, Punk, Disco, and Folk Rock blend and clash all at once, like sweet vertigo. The project functions by a clear narrative – getting over something you thought you would be stuck in forever. It is an eruption of hope, desperation, anger, and isolation hosted far too long by a small, inhospitable teenage heart, then a restitching of the rash you scratched too hard.
Ten songs altogether, “Karma Police” urges you into their cyberfeminist, extraterrestrial universe. Once you are strapped in, “aaahh (i don’t wanna go)” and “hysteria” muse about being trapped with lyrics like, “This is my nightmare. I am inside of it. How did I get here?.” It is like a bad acid trip with Hyperpop background music. Repeating dissonant notes warn you about something going in for the kill. Are you on the same team as cumgirl8… or are you their next target?
Either way, it is too late to get off the ride. The fever dream comes to a head with a climaxing, Hyperpop, Electroclash mosh track, “uti” (you might hear this one in a Brutalismus 3000 boiler room). Then “Simulation” brings you to a ’90s, Folk Rock, soft landing. The rest of the album feels more pensive than agitated. It might underscore a coming-of-age film about lustful boredom like Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto (2013). Exhalations are raw, uncomplicated, and tired, as “I was in the sun, but it went away” is sung. The rash has been scratched, has started to bleed, and now must be left alone.
For more teenage groaning about the state of the world, see “don’t try.” The song oscillates between a lament and polite pardon, between throwing a fit and asking for something nicely. It feels like kids playing in a garage with the knowledge of seasoned rockstars. This is while nostalgia rules in “iberry,” and with “ny winter” we reach a jarring standstill; a refreshingly real, reality slap. Featuring the words, “Sweetest before it stings. Sharpest pain before relief,” “ny winter” lives in the crux between the worst and newfound good. It feels like allowing pain in when you are too weak to push it away and letting it cleanse you. In short, it is the catharsis we were promised all along. Lastly, with “something new” (the album’s final track) we feel the pleasure of “finding” it once again with the lyrics “I could realize it’s alright sometime.”
The 8th cumming balances the sense of hope and melancholy mastered by artists like The Cure, Desire, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. As stated, it embodies the cycles and vortexes we fall into and the process of getting over something we thought we would be stuck in forever. That is, until we fall again. Listen to dance-cry because Cryptic Rock gives cumgirl8’s debut album 4.5 out of 5 stars.
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