Marie Davidson
City of Clowns
DEEWEE
Montreal’s Marie Davidson has been a well-known quantity in the world of techno and minimal wave via her releases on Ninja Tune and Weyrd Son, and as half of Essaie Pas, with her latest release City of Clowns feeling especially relevant to left of center outre forms of dance music. Expanding on Davidson’s oft-visited theme of feeling out of step with club culture and the broader world of popular electronic dance music, it’s an album that is rich with personality and charm, qualities that help the excoriatingly sardonic sentiment go down more smoothly.
Need an example of how City of Clowns can be both fun and acerbic at the same time? Look no further than single “Sexy Clown”, where Davidson matter of factly addresses the social game that artists play for advancement and for the benefit of their audience, her opening line “Am I full of shit?”, an admission of her own role in the charade. The song itself is a funky, shuffling slice of electro with a bouncy chorus that takes on a sinister edge as more and more atonal synth stabs poke through it, a perfect accompaniment to its lyrical discontent. It’s an approach that suits Davidson well, and she tweaks in interesting ways, as on the thudding and chattering “Y.A.A.M.” where Davidson asserts her control over the dancefloor with a whispered confidence that is completely convincing, or on the body-music inflected roll of “Demolition”.
As much as the record revolves around Davidson’s over-it outlook on the world of electronic music, there are plenty of songs which speak to her skill as a producer in the genre. “Contrarian” is as a fast-moving bit of uptempo techno that takes twists through numerous forms, working in breaks, acid and an intense peak that feels like it might derail if it slows for even a moment, its momentum carrying to the finish line. Conversely, “Statstical Modelling” is a nigh-perfect example classic electro, its skeleton reinforced by waves of shimmering synths and vocal stabs, deadly funky. Davidson cinches it with “Unknowing”, an anxious arrangement of keening klaxons and rapidfire kicks, slowly melting down to set the stage for her closing address to the audience, the critics, and everyone else who might be listening.
City of Clowns was no doubt a creative risk, simultaneously in danger of tipping over into cloying bitterness and cartoonish self-parody. It avoids those pitfalls through a preternatural self-confidence that comes through in its vocals, lyrics and production, which are too energized and sincere to ever feel like a put-on, even at their most arch. Like Davidson says, “Don’t get it confused, cuz I do it for me”, as succinct a summary of the album as you’d ever need. Recommended.
