“I used to be a gymnast.”
Give Seattle’s Gender Envy any and all awards for best song title with “Mads Mikkelsen,” which I hope is just the start of a deluge of multidisciplinary tributes to the iconic Danish actor, former gymnast, and dancer (that’s right, you read the last two parts correctly – now pick yourself up off the floor). Like its title subject, the song is steeped in a sort of dark classicism, with its ominous guitar vamp and goth torch singing. Gender Envy seems to be exploring high period Hole with a dusting of Bauhaus, an unabashed return to devil-horns and smeared eye-liner RAWK that feels novel nowadays. Tons of young bands are working through the Pavement and Breeders catalogs, not so many Love-era Cult and, frankly, I’m here for it. If you walk into a club and hear a song that sounds like “Mads Mikkelsen,” be prepared for bathrooms painted top-to-bottom jet black and at least one bartender with a backstory best unexplored.
Catch Gender Envy live this Friday at the Ball of Wax 70 release show at Southgate Roller Rink!