Video: Fashion Club Shares 'Confusion' Single

Fashion Club, the alias of Los Angeles-based artist Pascal Stevenson, has shared the third single off her highly anticipated sophomore album, A Love You Cannot Shake, due out October 25th via Felte Records. “Confusion” bends siren-like synths into an anthemic wash of euphoria, Stevenson addressing political and personal manifestations of overwhelming self-doubt. The track follows lead single “Forget (feat. Perfume Genius)” and “Rotten Mind (feat. Julie Byrne),” both moving, experimental art pop songs that incorporate ambient, classical, and left-field electro-pop. 

In a new ‘Band To Watch’ interview with Stereogum, Hannah Jocelyn praised the record as an “epic art-rock album” and a “a massive leap..the kind of dense, go-for-broke record artists make after years of building up goodwill.”

“You have to read into it quite a bit, but I think it’s about these feelings of self-doubt and low self-worth that come from the crushing capitalism inherent in American society,” she says of the new single. “It’s about trying to make yourself feel useful and feel worth something in a society that says, ‘If you’re not functioning a certain way, you’re not worth anything.’”

Though A Love You Cannot Shake is the first album that explicitly addresses her transness, it’s not so much a “coming out” record or a confessional, straightforward tell-all as it is a tastefully abstract distillation of her personal experiences and identities into stirring vignettes that anyone can relate to. 

Stevenson likens the experience of hearing A Love You Cannot Shake to staring into the sun, and though the record wasn’t written with religion in mind, its heavenly sonics and emotional sagacity also make it feel like a prophetic encounter. The album was shaped by Stevenson’s gender transition and sobriety journey and parses her fluid emotions surrounding these events and other personal trials and tribulations. But as much as it's a dialogue between Stevenson’s current and former selves, it’s also an invitation for listeners to join her in the work of discarding bitterness and recentering hope, especially when such efforts feel futile. 

Pascal Stevenson likens the experience of hearing A Love You Cannot Shake to staring into the sun, and though the record wasn’t written with religion in mind, its heavenly sonics and emotional sagacity also make it feel like a prophetic encounter. The album was shaped by Stevenson’s gender transition and sobriety journey and parses her fluid emotions surrounding these events and other personal trials and tribulations. But as much as it's a dialogue between Stevenson’s current and former selves, it’s also an invitation for listeners to join her in the work of discarding bitterness and recentering hope, especially when such efforts feel futile. Musically, A Love You Cannot Shake is an unshackling of expectations, as Stevenson’s previous stint as bassist in the L.A. post-punk outfit Moaning and her first record as Fashion Club, 2022’s Scrutiny, didn’t necessarily reflect the full range of her taste, which includes ambient, pop, classical and dance music, or embody her sensitive tenderness and femininity.

“By the time Scrutiny came out, I had transitioned, and I was making different music and caring about different things,” Stevenson says. “I felt less held back by ‘Oh I’m this kind of person, I have to make this kind of music,’ and I reached a point where I was like, ‘Let me just try to write a bunch of songs on acoustic guitar and piano, where I think the songs are good and have a solid core and then start producing them and see what happens if I don’t put any limitations in place.’”

In addition to her years touring in Moaning, Stevenson has spent time performing as a member of Girlpool, SASAMI, and Cherry Glazerr. Fashion Club has toured supporting The Breeders, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Lala Lala, Deradoorian and just wrapped an East Coast run with Protomartyr earlier this Summer. Fashion Club will headline Gold Diggers in Los Angeles this Sunday, September 15th. 

Tour Dates

9/15 - Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers

Tracklist:

01 Faith

02 Confusion

03 Forget (feat. Perfume Genius)

04 Ghost (feat. Jay Som)

05 Enough

06 One Day

07 Ice Age

08 Deny

09 Rotten Mind (feat. Julie Byrne)

10 Deify

Photo credit: Katherine Tilford

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