- The Toronto-based artist is hungry for violence again on her debut album, but this time she explores her adolescence with gripping candour.
- In her canonical 1978 essay Uses Of The Erotic, Audre Lorde made a profound contribution to second-wave feminist debates over the role of pornography in women's sexual oppression. The erotic, she wrote, was much more than an externalisation of sexuality, but "a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire."
Writing under her given name, Deborah Micho, Debby Friday penned an essay in 2019 joining Lorde's philosophy of the erotic, Carl Jung's theory of the "shadow self" and personal accounts of her live electronic punk performances. In it, the Toronto-based vocalist and producer stretched out the definition of the erotic, identifying it as "a togetherness, found in the 'the body, desire, love and the spiritual,' in the spaces between you and I." Reaching the same innermost depths of her creative spirit, Friday wrote her debut album.
Good Luck's ten tracks are coloured by this resounding empathy and naked vulnerability. Friday wrote the project as an ode to her adolescence, an intention that comes across most clearly in "So Hard To Tell," where her voice carries a sweet early '00s indie pop lilt, showering her younger self with warm balms of understanding words. But the rest of the album, shrouded in minor-key melodies and roaring, electronic interpretations of punk and folk music, leans dark. Good Luck exposes the fears, egotism and heathenry of Friday's psyche. The album, which will be accompanied by a visual film, tells the story of a villain's arc of sorts. But what comes off at first as blistering and self-deprecating actually reveals her deep reverence and respect for her own complexity. It's a spiky tenderness that sweeps across the title track, where nuggets of tough love—"Don't you fuck it up! / Give it what you got!"—are hurled over a grating electronic blitz.
Friday found early success as a DJ in the Montreal club scene, before abandoning that career and finding more purpose in channelling her creative energy into music production and performance. Fuelled by the togetherness she discovered on stage, she released two records across 2018 and 2019 that combined Freudian concepts, Greek mythology and expressions of carnal desire. The acute surrender of Friday's work evolves in Good Luck, where she takes a Jungian approach to her lyrics, accessing the shadow self via lyrics like "Big ol' ego / Red blood libido / I love to love and love to leave" on "I Got It," a driving track punctuated by sensual pants, featuring Uñas, who later joins in rapid-fire Spanish. On "Hot Love," Friday unleashes in a distorted shout, "And you know that we'll meet again / Another life, another hurricane." The production, which sounds like someone blowing raspberries up and down the scale over phosphorescent post-punk chords, is nearly as fierce as the words she spits like doom and venom.
Against these sweeping feats of emotion are the sparse arrangements that allow us to hear Friday up close, like a friend divulging their deepest secrets and latest sensual deeds. Her vocals are scratchy and pitched-down among the bludgeoning drums of "SAFE," where she asks softly into the dark, "Are you still here? Are you still near? Are you still safe?" The album's story takes a salacious turn on "Heartbreakerrr," where pneumatic hyperpop beats stutter like a bouncing lowrider. While the backdrop isn't exactly minimalist, it's just enough to fuel Friday as she puts a finger on a trigger and proceeds to "licky, licky, licky, licky, licky, li—."
On "PLUTO BABY," the line, "This is joy, this is violence" rolls off Friday's tongue like a teardrop sliding down a round cheek, finally giving way to gravity. It's a lust for blood familiar to anyone who was introduced to the musician with her 2018 debut EP, Bitch Punk, where she squealed, "Fuck this silence, I love this violence!" But in Friday's mouth, this language doesn't present as morbid or cruel. It suggests, rather, an artist's obsession of collecting all of life's kaleidoscopic emotions, serrated intensity and sobering experiences. One day, it can all be distilled into a song.
Tracklist01. Good Luck
02. So Hard To Tell
03. I Got it feat. Uñas
04. Hot Love
05. Heartbreakerrr
06. What A Man
07. Safe
08. Let U Down
09. Pluto Baby
10. Wake Up