New on Spectrum Culture, I review the excellent new record from the Sadie-esque Rhye:
In her landmark 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler theorized that gender is a performance, a set of actions that we do, rather than a universal who we are. What it means to be “male” or “female” is more a product of societal conditioning than biological impulse. Canadian songwriter/vocalist Mike Milosh, a heterosexual man, has embraced some cultural signifiers of femininity in his music. He generally sings softly, approaches his notes tenderly and makes frequent use of falsetto (although, as he points out in a recent New York Times interview, he rarely sings as high as Thom Yorke). This musical gender bending has confused any number of critics who, in their initial reviews, took the title of Rhye’s debut record literally and assumed the primary vocalist to be female.Click here to read more.
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