How is it being a frontwoman to an otherwise male band with a provocative name?
Patriarchy was just me in the beginning, but over quarantine I decided to embrace life and hire two hot straight ex male models. Sometimes if you want something you just have to ask – or manifest it through art. I was drawing pictures of a certain type of man to join the project… and then magic happened within the plague days.
Woke culture hasn’t ever overlapped with my personal art practice, which is impossibly intwined with my “real” life. So, my reality is my own… if it annoys someone, I must remind them that I’m in a perpetual dream state.
The name Patriarchy is the closest name I could think of to the word “Rape,” which was my original intended band name. I was encouraged by my producer and friends at the time to go with something a bit less offensive.
The word Patriarchy is actually quite pretty, right? It sounds like the name of a beautiful peacock. Many people have told me that the word has been stripped of its original meaning completely, and they now only associate it with me.
And that’s the point, to embrace the darkness and pain, and use it to accentuate the beauty of the light.
Your visuals often depict explicit sexual imagery, horror and seduction, with your music genre labeled “Snuff Pop” and “Slut Wave.” You have a decidedly “masculine” band name and a death metal font logo—as a woman who sings about intimate subject matter, do you feel like you decidedly put up somewhat of an exoskeleton with the makeup and the dark themes?
I think that everything we see in the outer world is an exoskeleton starting with one’s own body. Feelings and pain come from under the skull and beneath the skin… my outer imagery for stage performances and videos is more of a projection of what excites me rather than an armor to guard my intimate bits.
Intimacy is often the most brutal thing in life. The dirty, dark corners of the mind are the scariest and most exciting –I’m not even sure how I could display the depth of those corners visually. The shadow self-demon mostly comes out on stage –a physical thing that can barely be contained.
Photo: Nedda Afsari • courtesy @_patriarchy_
How has censorship affected you — both online and playing live? I recall a show in a park with children and the park rangers told you to cover your thong and stop moaning into the mic— has that happened before or since?
Yes [laughs] that was an interesting live event – I think it was on the stage in McArthur Park. They also told us we couldn’t say the word “fuck” – so suddenly my entire set became a chanting of the word “love” which I replaced it with.
Censorship definitely affects me in terms of social media. We are permanently shadow banned at this point, verified too, but our name comes up way at the bottom when you search for it.
It’s strange what gets censored and what doesn’t on these platforms, but censorship is just part of the culture now, and the platforms are a necessary evil, so all I can do is what I do, relentlessly, and see what seeps through the cracks.
As a feminine force, who are your biggest inspirations?
Main inspiration of my life is David Bowie, hands and dicks down. From there the inspirations fan out. To give you just a few female rock names of major influence, let’s go with Mylene Farmer, Kate Bush, Madonna, Tina Turner, Goldfrapp, Alice Glass and Katherine Bigelow (who’s a director but she did Strange Days and that’s like major)… I think she’s also the first female director to ever get an academy award (for Hurt Locker).
You have a song called “Don’t Fuck the Drummer” — can you tell us anything about that title and do you still perform it live after having a baby with The Drummer?
[laughs] That song I wrote and brought to the rehearsal space a couple years ago when I first asked the Drummer to play in my band. I said, “What do you think of this demo? Everyone is going to think that we are fucking even though we aren’t…”
He loved it and we worked on it together –it made the album. From then on it was always a big joke on tour, people would always ask: “why can’t we fuck the Drummer???” He would blush.
Eventually we did copulate, on tour in Texas to boot, so now when we perform a somewhat terrifying version of that song, I sometimes like to mention that it’s a song about the father of my first born…
In so many words, how is motherhood?
A total body high.
Your latest track, “Hurt Me,” is a stand-alone ballad. What prompted this direction and can fans expect more like this — or is it a one-off that could be perceived as postpartum-inspired?
I’d say it’s mostly a one off, but more accurately created during the… pre-partum, haha. I was pregnant when the band Curses approached us about collabing on a track, it felt like a nice exercise and perfectly timed. There’s always been a certain softness in my music, “Heat Lamps,” “Sex Doll,” and even the title track from The Unself aren’t totally dissimilar from “Hurt Me” –but the upcoming album is turning out to be quite a bit less emo than previous releases.
The process of recording and practicing has only really changed in the sense that we can only do sessions at home in the garage when he is sleeping, otherwise it’s pretty much impossible. So… less freedom, but the structure allows us to be more focused when we get time to work –silver linings.
Any dream collabs that you’d like in the future?
I’d really like a Nine Inch Nails remix on the next album.
You have some killer cover tracks. Do you play cover tracks live these days?
Sometimes we’ll pull out the Fad Gadget [cover of “Lady Shave”] at a party but have never performed the others live. Our sets are already too long just trying to play all the original stuff we want to.
You have a lot of touring coming up— with The Cult in Canada and then several festivals in the US. You seemed to jump right back into the swing of touring after having a baby.
I really wanted to make a point to myself of getting back into performing as soon as possible. Our first live show was actually NYE in Chicago… less than a month after I gave birth to Winter December 9, then we went to Europe for 5 weeks. I was still breast feeding so I sold my milk on that tour.
We took a 6 month break from shows to raise Winter and write the album, but now that he’s 9 months and we have all these shows coming up, I’ve decided to turn off the taps and go back to my regular cup size! Plus, the baby bites too hard and I’ve never been into nipple torture.
Photo: Nedda Afsari • courtesy @_patriarchy_
