Rating: NNNN
“Do you really need to carry around all that gear with you?” Marie Davidson says on the opening track of her fourth album. “My god.” Your Biggest Fan, the spoken-word opening track on her fourth and best solo album, is an internal dialogue between a faux-obsequious fan voice and an undermining internal voice of imposter syndrome.
After three solo efforts and several releases with various other projects, the French-Canadian electronic musician is on the ascent. Working Class Woman plugs into the headiness and awkwardness that come with rising from the underground while still hovering on the periphery of notoriety.
It contains some of her poppiest and funniest material to date, taking her minimal techno and Italo-esque electro rhythms into unabashedly melodic territory on the joyous So Right while swinging in the opposite direction with warehouse-friendly industrial sci-fi instrumentals Burn Me and Workaholic Paranoid Bitch.
For all their tightly programmed fury, those tracks lack the dramatic crescendo of the vocal ones. Davidson is at her most animated on the nightmarishly over-the-top The Tunnel. Whereas fellow Montrealer Tiga is known for humorous spoken word, he relies on syncopated rhyme schemes and campy affectation. Davidson is wilder, falling into fits of maniacal laughter one minute and growing deadly serious the next. She sometimes seems averse to rhythm – her voice can be as unpredictable as her explosive music.
One of the most accessible songs feels like the most concise representation of Working Class Woman’s mix of anxiety, determination and humour. Clubby, minimal electro cut Work It starts off with an earnest declaration of how hard Davidson works before getting ridiculously visceral (“Is that sweat dripping down your balls? Well then you’re not a winner yet”) and ends with a call for self-love. The song’s title and foundation is a well-worn dance (and pop) music trope but she makes it funny and resonant, especially at a time when it’s clearer than ever that working hard doesn’t necessarily equal stability – in every sense of the word.
Top track: So Right
Marie Davidson will play the Garrison on December 7.
