I'm so charming, I forgot who I was
I’m so charming, I forgot who I was (II) is out everywhere today, via our new DIY label Vengeful, Baby! Records.
This means our debut project is out, in full, finally. When I’m so charming (I) came out in April, I (Pag) spoke a lot about how this record and partygirl as a whole sprung from a coming-of-age X Survivorship/gendered crisis compounding as the world fell apart around me. Although I’m so charming (II) remains about this - in fact, it’s even more unabashedly conscious and furious and strange than the first half, and even though the world is still falling apart, and at an exponentially faster and more intense rate I’d say, instead of expanding on those themes more (have I done it justice in this release cycle? at what point are you beating a dead horse?), because it’s a big day, and because I am sentimental, I instead feel compelled to talk about the music and those with whom I make it, and what that means.
I sat and stared at my screen with the cursor blinking to begin this paragraph for at least an hour. I’m afraid of cliches. “Having a band is like having a family.” “I’m so lucky I met these people and we get to make music together.” “These people changed my life.” “These are the only people I probably talk to every single day of my life.” All true. Obviously.
It’s so much more than any of those things. TLDR: “The [partygirl] whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and I love my bandmates. Creating music with my five ingenious, silly, anxious, creative, beautiful, funny, caring, sensitive, brilliant, insane, talented bandmates is one of the greatest gifts in my life. You create a world together. You continually make this world every time you play a song, make a music video, practice. It is different and life-affirming every single time. It takes commitment and forgiveness and being vulnerable and being present. It is a calling to reach out into the universe holding hands, and in sync, and sometimes even perfectly in contradiction (“in harmony”) with five other people and feel the universe shepherding you back. This is no small feat and I’m grateful every single day.
You choose each other in the serious big ways as the world and your lives change, but also in the small, day-to-day ways: you take so much time-off from work to go on tour, to drive late at night through county roads white-knuckling because you can’t see in front of you, to pee in ungodly gas stations that carry only the most robotic looking nicotine products, to cry in front of each other when giant roaches climb up your pant leg in New Orleans, to sound terrible in front of when trying to hit notes way above your register or play in harmonizing tritones, to jam out to “It’s a Long Way to the Top” in a parking lot in Charlottesville, VA and be like “so true,” to say “this is so crazy but it just might work” nearly every time at practice as you count polyrhythms up to 120, converting from 4/4 to 9/8 to 6/8, etc. and etc. and etc.
Sure, we’re not beating the prog allegations and we probably never will - and although I disagree with the limitations of ‘genre’ on its face and yes! I know ‘prog’ can be/come off as corny and/or pretentious, but I’ve moved past the point of caring because more importantly the heart of this band is a curiosity in music and an embrace of life itself. It’s an affirmation in the new and the interesting and the different and the flesh/spirit away from the typical, the expected, the algorithmic and the screen/the simulation. In embracing this guiding artistic imperative, my bandmates made me not only a better, and more curious, musician and artist but a better, and more curious, person. We’re all very different and we come from disparate musical backgrounds and that’s an essential part of the process. It makes writing more exploratory and pushes limits further and further. How lucky I feel to be one of “6 dumb bitches telling each other exactlyyyy”!!
People ask me what the secret is to get six people in one room at least twice a week and it’s: partygirl and the music and the vision is the whole, not the sum of its parts. As one of our new songs (because we are working on LP2) goes, “I only wanted to finally feel sound / it’s around me now.”
See you all at Night Club 101 for our release show and party. Doors are at 7, Music is at 8. <3