Review: Faerybabyy "Rumpelstiltskin"
Listening to Faerybabyy's freshly-dropped sophomore album made me realize something: I used to listen to a lot more surf music. Hell, I went to a Wavves show on crutches my Freshman year of college. Perhaps at a certain point the scene seemed a bit too male-centered and lost some of its appeal (with notable exceptions such as Best Coast). Rumpelstiltskin reminded me why I loved the energy of surf rock in the first place, balancing jangling guitar riffs with Faerybabyy's androgynous, detached vocal tone. Yet, the lyrics add an intriguing tension by flatly refusing a "chill girl" archetype. The sense of girlhood and longing throughout the album doesn't feel emotionally flattened but rather emerges in a twisting, chaotic, and resigned manner like something sprung from the pages of a dark childhood fairytale, as the title suggests.
Faerybabyy possesses a distinct lyrical signature and commitment to DIY aesthetics, yet the album as a whole reads as quite polished. What appears rather simple and minimalist at first becomes an escapist, layered fantasy with closer attention to the lyrics and embedded motifs in the sonic and visual webs she weaves. She maps the arc of a doomed relationship, from desire to desperation to dissociation, from "call me!" to "is it true?" to "wasted."
I love that an album named for this classic Grimm's fairy tale starts out with a song called "call me!" For those who might be unfamiliar, Rumpelstiltskin begins with a miller who has an audience with the King, and, in order to make himself seem important, brags his daughter can spin straw into gold. The King has the poor girl locked in a room of his palace and tells her she must spin a room of straw into gold by morning or he will have her executed. She begins to weep until a little man appears, who performs the miracle in exchange for her necklace. This fails to satisfy the King's greed, and eventually he promises to marry the girl if she can fill larger and larger rooms with gold. Left without anything to offer the little man, the miller's daughter promises him her first born child. When she later gives birth, she is horrified when the "manikin" comes to collect on his deal. He gives her three days to find out his name and keep her child. She scours the countryside until she overhears him singing in the forest, boasting that no one knows his name is Rumpelstiltskin. When she calls him the correct name, he cries "The devil has told you that! the devil has told you that! . . . and in his anger he plunged his right foot so deep into the that his whole leg went in; and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two" (Margaret Hunt's 1884 translation of Grimm's Household Tales, pub. by George Bell and Sons, London).
On this opening track Faerybabyy inquires: "Darling, don't you still love me? / Come on, come on and call me baby." Essentially, the addressee will get his "baby" back if only he manages to call her the correct, endearing name. Motifs from the fairytale abound in the visual language, with Faerybabyy appearing on the album cover surrounded by gold, plasticky threads while wearing a princess costume. The arts and crafts vibe of her props and backdrops only emphasize the central conceit of the album: like the miller's daughter, Faerybabyy is using her bare hands to turn simple materials into creative gold, all while being terrorized by the men surrounding her.
The "is it true?" music video below is stylized as a video game in which Faerybabyy and her band zap various men they encounter with laser eyes to turn them into zombified fans and followers. It's just as fun to watch and listen to as it sounds. I love her commitment to clip art-style graphic design and early internet aesthetics which emphasize the handmade nature of each visual.
Rumpelstiltskin gives California cool with a somewhat guarded edge and possesses a fixation on girlhood as an identity formation. The fact that Faerybabyy, AKA Payton Morse, left her hometown of Conroe, Texas behind and began touring around with garage rock bands at just 16 is evident in her post-punk influenced sound. The single and music video for "Tough Luck" feature Faerybabyy in a cheerleader outfit and include a cheerfully ironic, chant-style chorus that stays stuck in your mind long after the song stops playing.
"Rough life, (rough life) tough luck, (tough luck) / Got a feeling, you suck (you suck) / Rough life, (rough life) tough luck (tough luck) / Got a feeling, you suck (you suck) / Tough luck, tough luck / Park life (park life), what's up (what's up) / Got a feeling, it's fucked (it's fucked)"
The laid-back tone of the album, which often contrasts ironically with the circumstances described in the lyrics, seems to be best explained through the track "lakeside," particularly the line "For so long I've tried / to feel like I'm lakeside in my mind." The album functions as a placid grounding point and source of calm amidst the storm, while still regularly acknowledging that all is not well internally or externally. The synths in this track provide a sense of levity against a groovy bass, while the lyrics speak to finding a sense on mental serenity even when one can't fully cope with the world around them.
The album features production by Day Wave, whose songs "Drag," "Deadbeat Girl" and "Total Zombie" absolutely dominated my playlists in high school and still hold up over a decade later. Overall, I loved listening to Rumpelstiltskin, and the more I listen to it, the more I like it. I feel that this is an album that will also age extremely well. I wish my past-selves could have accessed this artful exploration of female fantasy and discontent that is magically and dissonantly transformed into a chill, rhythmic treat.
While the album has dropped, the story of Rumplestiltskin is not over. Be on the lookout for soon-to-be-released additional music videos and visualizers. If you want to fully immerse yourself in Faerybabyy's fairytale world, click here to view dates for her current West Coast tour co-headlining with zzzahara (and check out her Y2K-style self-designed website, featuring a bible verse of the week and dress-up game!). As she says in her Spotify bio: stan Jesus, stream Faerybabyy.
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