Death and sex are as inseparable as pastrami and rye: it’s hard to imagine one without the other coming to mind. For Debby Friday, death and sex fuel the “hot noise” of her new EP, Death Drive. The experimentalist singer-producer (Nigeria-born, Montreal-raised, now Vancouver-based) describes her work as being “full of grief and full of relief. It is the painful and pleasurable next step, the sacrificial offering of my old life to the new.”
That tension is expertly wrung for all its worth on “Fatal”, a slow-grind, buzzing stomper that’s the illegitimate lovechild of Garbage’s “#1 Crush” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”. The very epitome of la petite mort, Friday sings of a passion between lovers so intense as to be the very death of them. They are, in Friday’s words, each other’s poison and remedy. As the pressure and intensity ramp up alongside the song’s runaway rhythm of thumping bass and skittering synths, Friday sings/pants “Who is the lamb? / Who is the butcher?” to drive home the point further that, if she’s got to go down, she’s sure as shit taking her partner with her.
Damn, I need a cigarette.
