MUSIC
Yves Tumor Outstrips Past Success
“Heaven for the Tormented” takes on roleplay, sex & love
Yves Tumor’s new album is “Heaven For the Tormented.”
Rina Sawayama’s Brash Debut Album
Pansexual Japanese-Brit singer takes on racism, sexism
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Rina Sawayama’s debut
album “Sawayama” tells
us how she became the
29-year-old woman singing
her story. The pansexual singer’s
parents emigrated from Japan
to the UK when she was fi ve, getting
divorced a few years later. Many
of her songs describe her crosscultural
heritage, her attitude that
“the pain in my vein is hereditary,”
and her rebellious youth. It’s hardly
an unusual immigrant’s tale,
but how many pop singers have
expressed it? Sawayama carries
herself with a brash confi dence —
it’s no accident that the album’s
fi rst single is called “STFU!”
Its music video depicts her on a
date with a nerdy white man who
proves to be a weeaboo: a Westerner
who fetishizes Japanese culture
from a distance without respecting
Asian people. Every sentence out
his mouth is a reference to Asian
culture, but usually a secondhand
version of it: “Kill Bill,” “Memoirs
of a Geisha,” airport sushi. When
he asks Sawayama if she’s mixedrace,
the music fi nally starts up,
offering a nü-metal-inspired barrage
of rage that turns more melodic
on its chorus. But she fl ips a
genre associated with lunkheaded
machismo to sing about her anger
at men like this one and the attitudes
they represent: “Have you
ever thought about taping your big
mouth shut?/ ’Cause I have, 10
times.” The video goes on to represent
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Yves Tumor’s very identity is in constant
Yvesie, and Shanti to make deconstructed
dance music. If Tumor began as an experimental
noise artist, the queer, non-binary singer/
songwriter/ producer has evolved into a constantly
mutating rock star in the vein of Bjork,
Lady Gaga, David Bowie, and Prince. This move
toward a more accessible but extremely eclectic
sound began on their 2018 breakthrough “Safe
In the Hands of Love.” There, Tumor alternated
between songs like the terrifying “Hope In Suffering,”
which felt like initiation music for a satanic
cult, and “Licking an Orchid,” a mournful,
grunge-infl uenced ballad which could’ve been a
hit on ‘90s alternative rock radio.
“Safe in the Hands of Love” conveyed a coherent
mood: looking for hope and protecting oneself
in a vicious world. Ironically, the album’s
most abrasive songs often conveyed its positive
sentiments, while the pop /rock songs were
cries of despair. On “Licking an Orchid,” guest
WARP RECORDS
herfantasies, which take images
of women from Japanese pop
culture but use them to turn the
tables on racist and sexist condescension.
It continues a critique of
infantilizing beauty standards and
stereotypes of Japanese women
begun in “Asian Beauty,” a collaboration
with photographer and temporary
tattoo artist John Yuyi.
Sawayama has found success
as a model, but “XS” both criticizes
consumerism and acknowledges
her complicity. It describes the demand
for fashion as an addiction,
returning to the chorus “give me
just a little more/ excess.” “XS”
captures the compulsive nature of
dependency, turning a catchy pop
tune into a bleary-eyed description
of a late capitalist treadmill. Its
fl ux. They started out as a chillwave
artist in the early 2010s. They have
also used the aliases Bekelé Berhanu,
➤ YVES TUMOR, continued on p.25
production is carefully structured,
with acoustic guitars strummed
on the verses and the chorus announcing
itself with a percussive
blast of electric guitar. Continuing
the theme, “Comme Des Garçons”
takes the name of the Japanese
fashion line but spins it into an
anthem of gender equality.
For an artist in her 20s, approaching
music with a genre-agnostic
attitude is the norm these
days. Sawayama’s debut ep “Rina,”
released in 2017, looked back at
‘90s R&B. This album is full of loud
electric guitar, drawing on alt-rock
from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.
In deploying nü-metal infl uences
as a symbol of her anger, she joins
➤ RINA SAWAYAMA, continued on p.25
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