We’re no longer a band unfortunately. Regardless, we’ve decided to keep putting out music. Blessed to make & share these songs.
The above quote was the introduction and explanation that accompanied the Toronto-based DIY noise-pop duo Black Dresses’s announcement of their latest album Forever In Your Heart via Twitter this past Valentine’s Day. The band had previously announced their break-up last May, citing some pretty ugly fan interactions, the intensity of which appeared to grow in proportion to their relative visibility on platforms like Bandcamp and various web forums. A tense situation in no way helped by some transphobic 4Chan ops directed at the band members, specifically Devi McCallion. While both Devi and Ada Rook have kept busy with their respective solo projects over the past year, their separate endeavors are clearly no substitute for the work they produce together. Ergo, we have a new Black Dresses album to listen to this year, and, depending on your taste (assuming you have any), enjoy. The above quote is characteristically the deceptively passive assertiveness that continues to define the group and their defiance of detractors and overzealous fans alike. The subtext, write large being: “We like this project, we like making music together, but we’re sick of your shit.”
I’m not going to say too much about this album, or the band, as almost everyone reading this has almost certainly already made up their mind about how they feel about both. What I am going to say though, is that Forever In Your Heart feels like a step forward for the band in terms of focusing their idiosyncratic blend of late ’90s and early ’00s industrial and alternative metal, and the bright, free-floating quality of today’s bedroom produced Bandcamp pop. At times it feels like their lunging With Teeth-esque production and guitar work is the real deus ex machina of their anguished aesthetic, with the more innocent-sounding bliss-blooms of synth and girl-to-girl chants acting as a cover for their boiling rage. In instances likes these, the band resembles a Build-a-Bear filled with flammable foam insulation, where any stray spark could, and often does, result in a conflagration. Still, there are equally compelling sections of the album where the soft, warm tones of the production and vulnerability of their performances feel readily poignant, and in fact, the whole point of the project, while the instances where the vocal work resembles that of Boston’s Vein appear as more of sonic echos of vicious wounds, long healed, but whose lingering scars bare physically brands of suffering, the memories of which have yet to be washed from the front of the band’s memories. In either case, these disparate elements feel fully integrated in a way that leaves the impression that the band is always in control of the direction of these songs, no matter how widely they may veer from one verse to the next.
The lyrical content on Forever In Your Heart is very clearly delineated, and at times cutting, even when sung in an approximation of death vocals a la Fire-Toolz or Morbid Angel. It’s pretty clear that the band is directing their words towards specific targets, and they’re not leaving a whole lot to be lost to ambiguity or interpretation. This is good because a lot of what they say here conveys sage advice on dealing with your own emotional state, as well as that of others. Of the lyrics I feel comfortable interpreting here, “Understanding” has some of the most prescient, offering an explanation for past motives for making music (“I tried to offer up my pain to be understood”), before revealing an epiphany that the expression of pain can be as imprisoning as the pain itself (“But I don’t think it’s my pain that can be understood / or needs understanding / there not a lot of pain in this world that makes any sense”), before arriving at a hard-won conclusion (“maybe people need to be understood instead”). They’re doing the work here for you folks. All you have to do is follow the liner notes.
Black Dresses are probably not going to be many, or even most, people’s bag, but if you take anything away from listening to Forever In Your Heart I hope it’s that you, and everyone you meet, is more than the sum total of the pain they’ve endured. I’d hope that you already make a conscious effort to always consider others, not just with empathy, but compassion, but if for whatever reason you need a reminder, consider this it.
Stream the entirety of Forever In Your Heart via Bandcamp below:
Buy Forever In Your Heart here.
Follow Black Dresses on Twitter here.
