New Music Video - EMA "California"

"Fuck California, you made me boring." That's how you start a song. Erika M. Anderson used to wail out bruised, desperate koans like this as the leader of Gowns, and now she wails them out as herself. As a South Dakota transplant on the West Coast, Anderson knows more than most about displacement. And "California" is the shattered cry of someone living unmoored, trying to make sense of what's going on in her head. The song never gels into a coherent thought, but how could it? Instead, we get phrases that cut deep: "What's it like to be small-town and gay," "I used to carry the gun," "You've corrupted us all with your sexuality, tried to tell me love was free." She grabs a phrase from Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?"-- "I'm just just 22, and I don't mind dying"-- and repeats it over and over, twisting it all around."

~ pitchfork.com