Teri Gender Bender has released a new single and video in the form of "The Get Up" off her upcoming SATURN SEX EP out on Oct. 21 via Clouds Hill, she will also be touring with The Mars Volta with three dates at The Hollywood Palladium. On the new song the avant-garde artist and front lady of Le Butcherettes weaves a transfixing melody about the dangers of trying too hard to fit a mold that's not of your own design - or worse still - created by those indifferent to your own identity. The melody is at once dreamy as it is marred by discordance, with Teri's dual Spanish and English lyricism emerging hazily from behind layers of sonic wonder.
"I never did enough," the repeated lines echo dissonantly amidst the heavy thrummings of percussion and buoyant electronics that float effervescently in the background. Throughout "The Get Up" these two forces are both at odds and phenomenally harmonic - an aural emphasis on the kind of beauty that can emerge from things that appear contrary in nature. Throw in all her hauntingly layered vocals at "The Get Up" becomes a song not easily forgotten or let go of. Play it once and like most of Teri's music you find yourself enthralled by the soundscapes she inhabits.
In the music video for "The Get Up," directed by Violeta Félix, they take these themes of distortion and image and apply them to the filming itself. Shot like a very old piece of film and filtered heavily it sees Teri singing out amidst grassy fields and a lonely stream - but not before emerging out of a black trash bag (the very same she crawls back into at the end of the film) and wandering the streets. The whole video contains this very intense visceral reaction to the ideas Teri sings about on the track, of the searing isolation but also the need to find strength in yourself to get up out of it.
"'The Get Up' is about coming face to face with the feeling of never doing enough," Teri explained. "Finding the strength to get out of your mind, in search for inner peace and coming to terms with being stuck with yourself. In search of the unmasking of the autistic self. Because it can get so tiring trying to be "normal," "atypical" ... dangerous even."
