Introducing: partygirl, an imaginative, maximalist indie rock band based in Brooklyn. The group was formed by long-time musical partners Pagona Kytzidis (vocals/rhythm guitar/keys) and Colby Lamson-Gordon (bass/vocals), who have been writing and performing together since their college days at Columbia University. Pagona and Colby are joined by Francesca Pastore (lead guitar/production), Alec Mauro (sax/vocals), and Jonathan Ashley (drums). Drawing inspiration from artists past and present, such as Queen, Mitski, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead and St. Vincent, partygirl strives to create a unique and forward-looking sound. Through their music, partygirl seeks to imagine new worlds based on feminist praxis, radical Survivor identity, and a rejection of our present-day dystopia.
Today, partygirl announces their eponymous debut EP via The Big Takeover, who wrote: "It’s heavy. It’s groundbreaking. And it’s like nothing like we’ve heard before." partygirl, the EP, seeks to introduce partygirl, the band and the project. The EP represents a “tasting” of what partygirl strives to be: a maximalist indie rock band which writes and performs songs that depict the experience of Survivorship (those who identify as Survivors of sexual assault and rape) as a radical political identity and as a space for radical political action. As a Survivor, musician, and political organizer, Pagona Kytzidis formed partygirl to try to process her own sexual assaults and the resulting psychological and political trauma, and to challenge popular discourse on sexual assault and the violence of misogyny.
partygirl is a band about specifically Survivorship, but more generally about world-building, and about imagining a new and better future. partygirl plans to construct a better world by embracing the true spirit of Survivorship: what Kytzidis argues is a lived identity that refuses to accept what people have ascribed and forced upon you, and that celebrates the inherent Selfhood that lives in each person.
As Kytzidis says at partygirl shows: “I perform and write this music with a desperation to be a Self, to be My Self, in the totality of my experience, all the darkness, the intensity, the extremes, to be my biggest Self for all the times I was my smallest Self. This music is exercised as an avenue for the Possible.”
partygirl believes that the world that we have inherited is not inevitable and represents a refusal to subscribe to apolitical numbness, cynicism, and nihilism. Instead, the band wants to imagine a new, better world with other artists, thinkers, and listeners. In that, partygirl is a very serious, musical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary project (that is increasingly transgressive, and thus essential, given that the United States is heading towards a post-Roe state). partygirl aims to allow those who are Survivors, to exist as complex, full Selves and thus, partygirl seeks to create a “future in the present.” partygirl the EP seeks to be the very beginning of this project. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment