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In 2021, Molly Kirschenbaum won the Hollywood Encore Producers’ Award for their one-person show Hot! : (. But things were just heating up for Kirschenbaum, aka Goblynne, who is set to release their first solo album, also titled Hot! : (. on June 23, 2023. Using songs from their performance, this record explores the tenacity of performative femininity, even for those who reject it. “As a nonbinary person, I have often felt like femininity was something I either chose to engage with or was forced to engage with,” Kirschenbaum says. “I ended up creating this character in my head that this project was about, this person who embodies all the aspects of Western American beauty, blonde, blue-eyed, but a little tortured, a little haunted, and decided to try to free them from their body with this album.” For Kirschenbaum, that meant turning their multi-instrumental, vocal, and sound mixing skills into art pop so shiny it doubles as a mirror. Kirschenbaum, alongside co-producer Adam Rochelle, crafted a smart pop landscape a la Caroline Polachek.
“Get & Go” kicks off the album with driving 80s synth bass, dark synth, and processed vocals, culminating in a sound like putting on high heels and a fake personality. “It’s all about lying to yourself so you can feel sexy, but, on your way home after the party, whatever it is, the whole thing falls apart and you feel like you faked it the whole time.” Channeling art pop chanteuses like St. Vincent, Kirschenbaum’s voice swaggers breathily through the slyly-morphing soundscape. “I know it’s late, my lipstick’s drying,” they sing as the beat slowly dissipates. Kirschenbaum, a bassist who tours with Claud, knows how to anchor a song while driving it forward.
“I am a maximalist, sonically--very ‘more is more’-- but I really wanted to discover the relationship between clutter and cleanliness, sonically speaking. I focused on writing catchy hooks, and slipping that messiness into the cracks between choruses.” On “I’m a Little Sweetie,” that means robotic feminine voices repeat their glossolalia in an uncanny march punctuated by screams. They sing about their desire to be cute, even amid bloodletting catharsis. “It’s just about desperately needing to rage and scream, but also desperately needing to be fucking adorable,” Kirschenbaum says, illustrating the sentiment with pictures of their “weird dolls.” In one, “Heidi”’s porcelain face peeks out of a red felt large-teated devil costume. “I would love to be perceived in the same way as a creepy doll. There’s something about the song ‘Little Sweetie’ that feels like a perfect representation of my experience of femininity to me - always trying to be cute while feeling utterly fucked in the brain.”
As the album progresses, Kirschenbaum begins to seek truth within their performativity/authenticity beyond the dress-up. “Fear Is Normal, Always” is a cinematic track featuring an organ and transcendent synth sweeps while glitches spike in the background. The overall feeling is an exhalation. “It’s also how I felt when I first met my partner, just that they were so deeply, truly good, and authentically themselves,” Kirschenbaum explains. This audio collage laminates the layers of doubt and surprise at finding contentment.
The closing track, “Where This Goes,” embraces the feeling of the fear melting and feeling blissful even in domesticity. Referencing buying things from Craigslist and picking out shelving,
this song celebrates and elevates the mundane. “It’s a love song about my partner and our relationship, and how it was the most genuine, peaceful love I’d ever experienced. It didn’t require any of the bizarre gendered mind games I was so used to playing. Confusing hookups and performative text messages were replaced with watching movies on the couch, running errands, sitting with the cat,” Kirschenbaum says. Gospel-tinged backing vocals soar over the dreamy hyperpop soundscape backlit by violins. These elements, combined with Kirschenbaum’s delivery, make for a song that could belong on Tegan and Sara’s Heartbreaker.
As Goblynne, Kirschenbaum transforms their live show into theater. “More is more!!!! A live show should be about so much more than the music. I want people to feel like they are getting their money’s worth.” Their live shows incorporate wigs, scaly gloves, and a fake meditation app issuing warped platitudes about Goblynne’s appearance and personality. Despite the costumes, Kirschenbaum is doing so much more than playing dress-up. Like one of their weird dolls, Goblynne embodies the “ delicious insane horrors of trying to be a girl, trying to be a person, trying to be anything.” Only they do it with ear candy hooks and polished vocals like a thick lacquer over the barbed lyrics, screams, and cracks that they always fill with more.
Goblynne self- releases Hot! : (. on June 23, 2023. The first single, “ Where This Goes,” drops on May 26, 2003, and there will be a video as well.
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