![]() ![]() All of the above peaks in none other than “ The Bus Song,” in which Duterte sings, “Take time to figure it out / I’ll be the one who sticks around / And I just want you to lead me / And I just want you to need me.” Vignettes both hazy and crystal clear spin together narratives of everyday life and interpersonal relationships gone stagnant with routine and indecision, cutting deceptively sour into the languid lullaby sound of jangly guitar and slacking drums. Although I should hope that I’m well beyond that point by now, I still can’t help but feel uncannily seen each time I play her music. Although I hadn’t completely come to terms with my queerness at the time, something about the way her gentle, pleading lyrics tended towards a less and less plausibly male subject of attention over the course of each song (or maybe the fact that I simply chose to perceive it that way) and the way she let her blue button-down hang open like a jacket felt heartachingly familiar to me. The first time I’d ever heard of Jay Som, the one-woman project of Melina Duterte, was when I saw her open for Mitski the summer after my sophomore year of high school. “I glow pink in the night in my room / I’ve been blossoming alone over you / And I hear my heart breaking tonight / I hear my heart breaking tonight / Do you hear it too?” Maximum Quearning (queer yearning) Track: Pink in the Night As a queer Asian American woman myself, there’s something revolutionary and magical about hearing frustrations and emotions so strikingly similar to my own being bellowed into the pickups of a distorted guitar for the world to hear. Although she writes for herself and from her own unique experiences first and foremost, taking care to avoid being a representative figure for all Asian American women in indie rock, it’s undeniable that so much of her music speaks to the specific yet incredibly resonant feelings of otherness that queer women of color wrestle with throughout our lives. All jokes aside, Mitski Miyawaki has been arguably THE trailblazing figure for women of color in the predominantly white and male-dominated genre of indie rock in recent years. ![]() If you haven’t heard of Mitski by now, then you’re probably new to this publication and what we stand for. ![]()
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January 2023
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