tony soprano
today… we released THE partygirl song, tony soprano. you can, and should dare i say, listen here. you can, and should, share it with everyone. this one really, really means a lot to us. especially me.
below lies an earnest, dark, truthful reflection, feel free to skip if that’s not the mood for today (TW: assault, trauma)
Tony Soprano the idea first generated in the basement of a Barnard College building. It was 2018. I was 19. And the Kavanaugh hearings had just begun. They hit me hard. And at the time I wasn’t even sure why. I was unable to get out of bed and do anything but study (and I studied basically from 6AM to 12AM every day, it was manic). I lost a lot of friends that semester. I got inextricably tied to a very select few. And I started going to therapy.
And there in therapy was the first and only place where I first used language to describe these experiences. “Assault” “trauma” “mania”… the hearings were affecting me because it had happened - like many young women and queer folks - to me. I had been in denial. I moved through denial with confidence and brute force. I ignored a loss of my power and autonomy and what had been taken from me at 17. I overcompensated with achieving, success and moving. Always moving. Always improving. Always denying. Always forgetting
My therapist wanted me to try to slow down, to calm down. And she was so helpful in having me realize what happened to me and cracked me open in a way that I desperately needed and has forever shifted me. But she - unknowingly - compared me to a great white shark because of my need to move to survive. I laughed because it was the same metaphor used by Tony Soprano’s therapist to describe him. And this idea - and this quality of mine (and many others) - stuck with me forever and ever.
Of course, in the 5 years between this event and when Tony Soprano the song was fully realized I never stopped moving. In fact, my gendered reality, my bodily autonomy, my sexuality, my experiences between myself and the world had only gotten worse in some ways and in others, more complicated. In the years that came between, I had improved my theory (see partygirl statement from 2022) and importantly started partygirl - I demanded to be treated as a Subject and a Self, - and as a part of my little gendered war, I found myself returning to as many situations with men to be treated as one (as a man, and as a Self) while in my body. How does desirability and power play together? What can you challenge? How can you inhabit yourself in your skin and manage a sexual reality where you’re nearly constantly degraded? Am I a dream? A commodity? What’s the shelf life of a pretty little thing? Can I return to the site of the original sin and overcome it?
In this midst of this movement (October 2021) I dreamt:
“[REDACTED 1] appears and we go to the back room. he tries to fuck and tells me he actually only likes me for sex. i tell him i need to think about that and he leaves. i am all alone. i go outside onto the dock and the people on the boat tell me they’re going to take me out west. i agree because i’m trying to get away from everything. i get on the boat but there’s only room for me on a tube and i fall off and my notebook gets soaked. it’s so cold. i climb back on the dock but the boat is gone. im soaking wet and running on the dock but it’s now a corridor. it turns into a subway station but the subway cars are different - they strap people in. i get in and speak to the person next to me in spanish. i get off and there’s another corridor and people are running. i see out of the corner of my eye [REDACTED 2]. he’s the only one i know. he ignores me. but then we dive into the water and the two of us pulls ahead. he is in front. we are swimming to chicago. somewhere by minneapolis a giant shark appears. he bites off my left hand. [REDACTED 2] turns back to help and distracts the shark while i get on the dock. he climbs off and the two of us enter the young couples house on the shore. they make a tourniquet for my arm and i see malaria pills in the counter. that’s why there was the shark i said, so much blood. there are probably more on the ocean floor. it’s too unsafe to go swimming.”
The only way for me at the time to survive was to dive under the wave. And I only did it with people I love, the best friends I could ever have (love to Julia, Autumn, Christina, CG, Natalie, Jaucqir, Isabel, Jihye, and importantly to this music, Fran), and with this band, this music. with this song, we enter “I’m so charming, I forgot who I was (II)” the second half of our project, the part where instead of breaking down, I was fighting back. It’s darker, it’s heavier, it’s smarter, it’s vicious, it’s vulnerable.
As we’ve entered a heightened and metastasized era of fascism, American rot, techno-feudalism etc., those in power are increasingly seeking to limit everyone’s - but especially trans folks and immigrants - right to their own body and mind and space and future - their Self, their spirit, their God and their universe. The fight for Self has escalated, it’s approaching nuclear every day. I hope this song provides some solidarity, some hope, a place for rage, and a march of a drum.
Tony Soprano credits
Lead Vocals: Pagona Kytzidis
Guitars: Francesca Pastore
Drums: Jonathan Ashley
Violin: Claire Lin Jenkins
Bass: Andrew Jordan
Organ, Rhodes, Bass Clarinet: David Mirarchi
Lyrics by Pagona Kytzidis
Music by Pagona Kytzidis, Francesca Pastore, Jonathan Ashley, Claire Lin Jenkins, Andrew Jordan
Produced by Francesca Pastore
Engineered and recorded by Jeff Berner at Studio G
Mixing by Francesca Pastore
Mastered by Carl Saff
Album art by Natalie Tischler