Lucy Liyou: MR COBRA

""It's all about the human as a house," Kate Bush replied when asked to supply the meaning of " Get Out of My House," the blood-curdling, The Shining-inspired shriek of a final track on her self-described "she's-gone-mad" record, 1983's The Dreaming. Bush's song envisions a woman battling the monsters she's imagined her fear has made manifest, braying like a donkey and kicking in doors: "You change, it changes; you can't escape, so you turn around and face it, scare it away.""

"MR COBRA, Liyou's new album and theater piece, reckons with a troubling experience that's only too common: a period in her teenage years during which she "fell in love with a predator." The narrative follows Liyou's heroine, named Babygirl, and the titular Mr. Cobra, voiced by Jake Muir, gutting the memories until they spill out in the form of a daring avant-pop opera. Another artist might have couched such boldly confessional writing in music designed not to overtake the gravity of its subject matter, but Liyou weaves disco, ambient pop, and glitchy electronics into songs as funny as they are fearsome."

""Being in this fascist country reminds me every day that this world wants women like me numb and dead," Liyou writes in a statement that accompanies the record. "And so why not just laugh, moan, scratch, and implode? Why not make death wait its turn?" On 2023's ambient sound collage and last year's more conventional "songs record" Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name, she approached these themes with more introspection and inti"

A song meaning frames fear as something inside the self that must be faced and expelled. An experimental trans woman of color builds an artistic identity through distorted, refracted work. A new album and theater piece centers on a heroine, Babygirl, and a predator figure, Mr. Cobra, voiced by another performer. The narrative dismantles memories until they spill out as an avant-pop opera. Disco, ambient pop, and glitchy electronics create songs that are both funny and frightening. The work responds to living in a fascist environment that seeks to make women like her numb and dead, proposing laughter, moaning, scratching, and imploding while delaying death.

Read at Pitchfork