Iconic Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, artist, and showgirl Macy Rodman's newest album Unbelievable Animals is out August 27 via Shamir's Accidental Popstar Records. Today, she debuts sultry single/video "Rock 'N' Roll Gay Guy" alongside a feature with MTV LOGO NewNowNext. Infectiously catchy, upbeat and summery, like a movie soundtrack from 1999, Macy explains: "'Rock 'N' Roll Gay Guy' is the story of a trans girl hooking up with a gay friend, but at its core it's about sharing physical intimacy with a friend and feeling no regrets or shame about it."
Lead album single, electro-thumper "Love Me!" premiered on PAPER and sparked further praise across Artforum, GLAAD, Jezebel, NYLON, them., and more. The massive, sugary, propulsive sound of the record - confession and heartbreak set to club-ready beats with '90s radio rock inflections - is the sound of reemergence, of rebirth, the return to the dance floor. Liz Phair, Faith Hill, Cher, Madonna, and more heroes of that era spiritually inhabit its tracks, where slick pop production and the sneering punk attitudes of Marianne Faithful and PJ Harvey mingle at the '90s New York nightclub.
Moving to New York from remote Juneau, Alaska to initially pursue her dreams in fashion, the underlying trans rage of repressed youth - searching for a space of belonging, reaching through media for escape - becomes a theme of the Brooklyn resident's work, though her media landscape these days is populated by pop stars and rom coms. Couple this with the absurdism of fantasy, a purposeful schizophrenia of a slew of characters that inhabit her songs, and you get closer to her new album. "The title 'Unbelievable Animals' prevailed because while writing the record, I saw my life in past loves laid out in front of like a Discovery Channel special and it made me feel like I wasn't alone in my feelings. We are all just Unbelievable Animals," Macy says.
The new record, chopped down to 12 tracks after challenging herself to write 20 songs in 30 days, is therefore a turning point, one that leaves her more vulnerable than ever before. The stakes are higher because it is real in the way her previous work has not been, where personas emerge in order to analyze and get over the breakup that left her reeling. It becomes a balancing act of finding a continuity with her previous work and using this project as the vehicle to recover from the baffling heartbreak, not to mention the conditions of the pandemic. It is a personal risk, but a logical next step for a delightfully unpredictable artist.
Macy creates worlds that are not surreal, but hyperreal - where everything is false so everything is true, where the relativity of truth becomes defined by the ecstatic moment of performance and experience. Evident from the release of first her EP HELP (2016), and subsequent albums The Lake (2017) and Endless Kindness (2019), she forges avenues of escape, works that viscerally grab you, but you can't believe it's happening. Much like the films of David Cronenberg, her favorite filmmaker ("long live the new flesh" is tattooed on the inside of her left arm.) But that's the joy of Macy's work, the constant turmoil of self discovery that accompanies such a disconnected world, where anyone could see themselves reflected - if only they turn away from the world's endless hall-of-mirrors long enough to take a look.
