Glitter, Grit, and Truth: Energy Whores’ “Pretty Sparkly Things”
3 min read
They were made by the New York underground; Energy Whores combined the aggression of political protest with the art rock and the beats of electronic music, all powered by their energy drinks. The group has possessed exceedingly graphic photos and sarcastic lyrics and has never been timid to discuss issues that the other groups are afraid have tainted, covetous, consumerist, and controller rulers. It has been likened to the uncivilized subversion of Patti Smith and the artistic inspiration of Talking Heads, but through the perspective of contemporary EDM music and scalding social criticism. Their audience has been sculpted to not be safe: as provocative and inflammatory as their tunes, a soundtrack to a people being fed glitter without the glitz. Their new album, Arsenal of Democracy, on the anvil, the group keeps pushing the envelope and leaving nothing safe; they are here to remind the world that art still can rattle the cages in an age of pop perfection and disposable music.
Everything that Energy Whores can be is produced in their new single, Pretty Sparkly Things: their satire can and does sting, their beats can and do trance, and the words slice to the bone of inequality in the modern world. The song at first appears throbbing with angular synths and an infectious club beat, the glistening kind of beat that could be playing during a night out. Then, perhaps, could follow the language, with its earth-fleecing ways and bad girls, in evidencing the absurdity of the culture of the luxurious, and in indicating the ugly fact of those who were never invited to the party. The song breaks the illusion of the wealthy worship and enlightenment with words that create an eye-opening contrast of bling and bills unpaid, showing it to be a deception, a distraction, and not an instrument of exploitation and war. Carrie Schoenfeld is passionate and aggressive, and she sings the song in a hypnotic manner, leaving the message not discarded completely, but as the satire in itself. This is tinsel protest music, which requires dancing and demands interrogatives.
Pretty Sparkly Things is not yet another entertainment. It is an infatuated society with unrealistic dreams, as thousands of people struggle in the process and to make both ends meet in the process, Energy Whores manage to turn a club-worthy song into a burning social commentary. And the genius, also, of their mode consists in this twin effect: To procure the attention of the hearers by the glittering of the production, and then to furnish to them lyrics which reveal the mechanism of the glittering. In the age of commercialized revolt, where its performance, quite literally, is sterilized, Energy Whores are pleasurably direct, shoot-to-the-head direct. Even greater segments of this free-wheeling amalgamation-blending electronic power will be blended with folk-style stories and an avant-garde-rock sensibility in their second album. Energy Whores stands out among those who seem to think that music ought to be body and mind. Pretty Sparkly Things is not an isolated event, but a red flag on a neon pole, a wake-up call to tell that there is a darker narrative to be given.
English