Rachel Cion - "Wanted!" EP
RACHEL CION - “WANTED!” EP
Art by Claire Monroe
Rachel Cion’s new EP, Wanted!, contains 3 beautifully crafted takes on the ideas of contemporary folk, heavy rock, and dystopian pop. The EP’s first track, “Gunpowder Baby”, is perpetually propelled by a heavy bassline that is reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “One Of These Days”, Tame Impala’s “Elephant” and Talking Heads “Psycho Killer”. Cion also pays homage to the former in her verse, making sure to let us know to not touch her “Gunpowder Baby” because she’s “a real live wire”. This is perhaps the poppiest moment of the EP, reminding me of St. Vincent’s “Los Ageless”.
The second song on Cion’s EP, “What You’ve Done”, immediately struck me as familiar. It sounded like a tune that I’d heard by another artist but just couldn’t place my finger on. While dissecting, I thought about the artists that had done this type of fingerpicking guitar work, because that’s what registered with me in terms of familiarity. I finally decided, after about 50 listens, that the best comparison to this song was the album abysskiss by Adrianne Lenker, doused in a kerosene of wicked folk-blues, and set alight by the same power that shut up the big-talker that Cion exposes in this tune of declaration. No, you cannot take her home you big mouthed son of a gun! Back to the guitar itself, the fingerpicking Cion uses in this song leaves the impression that every note is just as important as every full chord, and every vocalistic moment. It’s as if the whole song is a burning question, with a thousand different components, asking “What have you done?”.
The final song of the EP, “Heist”, is a searing blues nugget that builds off of the same idea that “Gunpowder Baby” does. This is for sure the heaviest hitting track on the Wanted! EP, rocking you fast and forcefully until the fadeout. These two tracks are very complementary to one another, with “Heist” being a grungy blues sludgefest to complement that dark, dystopian pop of “Gunpowder Baby”. The two tracks act as counterweights on this EP, balancing either end of the EP with different notes of the same idea of reclamation. With “Gunpowder Baby”, Cion claims her gunpowder baby, and in “Heist”, she wants your body, love, power, and control.
Gleep glorp
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Review by ::
Christian Alldredge
Blog Contributor
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