Charles – “Impudent Hussy”

Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and video director Charlotte Ercoli Coe, aka Charles, has released a new single from her brilliantly weird upcoming album, Let’s Start a Family Tonight (out 5/21 on Babe City).

I wrote this wonderfully bitter song on the second darkest day of my life. I felt like Quasimodo / permanently marked territory that no one would ever come near again. It’s about feeling imprisoned and capitulating to the idea of completely giving up on having a decent life. The day I recorded it is also the day I went to a birthday party and met the person who spurred on “Rex Harrison”, who pulled me out of that nonsense thinking entirely.

Charles

Prominently featuring heavy synthesizers and bizarrely romantic lyrics that Coe recorded in her apartment or in her parked Honda Civic, the album demonstrates that Coe is clearly a creative genius. One can clearly imagine kids swaying in the club to Let’s Start a Family Tonight‘s more upbeat tracks before realizing they’re bopping their heads to lyrics like “teenage pregnancy.” Coe’s blend of psych pop and trance is fun, but on a deeper level, she seriously questions hegemonic notions of family and compulsory reproduction, a theme few are brave enough to approach.

Pre-order Let’s Start a Family Tonight on Bandcamp.

Photo by Jerry Finger.