Kt Emmerson Has Your Doses of Dark Wave Medicine

Dark Wave Medicine

by Kt Emmerson

Y’all, it’s been a tough start to our school year down here in small-town Texas. My littlest (you remember, baby tyrant?), vacillates between banshee screaming, MMA quality punch throwing, and the saddest little pathetic whimpering at morning drop off for my sons’ loveliest of preschools. This is serious child-focused early learning. Play is worshiped here, they do not want for attention, affection, or admiration. Free painting, oozing touch centers, and a Narnia playground. It’s 3 hours long. He’s got nothing to complain about. But balk, he does. And it’s been 3 months! It’s a better 3 hours than they will likely have with my tired butt.

In any case, I’ve struggled with myself in these moments because, well, I’m from the south and we are bread to have deep hearts. We do a lot of lovin’, and huggin’, and kissin’. It may be fake (we are a home of the phrase “well, bless your heart”, which really means “fuck you very much”) but we really are all about making others feel happy and comfortable. However, my southern soul has a darker side. Let’s call it my Peter Murphy side. Morbid, melancholy, morose. It’s not always good for a Goth mom to wear the dark cloud (for the children’s’ sake)…but it’s oh so comfortable.

When I’ve lost my inner crybaby (having bolstered all the crybabies in my house) I’ve recently found a two-fer of bands that help ease me back into my dark normal.

Boy Harsher, a duo formed in Savannah, GA, now residing in Northampton, Mass competes for best new Bauhaus sound, IMO. It evokes dark Finnish/Swedish crime drama. If you’ve got black-blood flowing through your veins, you need a little of this right now.

“Boy Harsher is a dark electronic duo that produces gritty dance beats infused with ethereal vocals, creating a sound that is eerie, intense and incredibly danceable. Augustus Muller develops the underbelly of sound with minimal beats and grinding synths, where Jae Matthews whispers, screams and chants on top.”

Start with this, the more traditional, dark wave. Smokey, ghostly, artsy, it’s got a Siouxsie back bone.

Chase it with their 2017 release, a sight more 90’s-German-dance-club, if you will. But it maintains their séance essence.

Sixth June will tie up all of your mamma loose ends, I have no doubt. Lidija Andonov and Laslo Antol, originating from Belgrade, surely have a cabinet full of undead tonics ready to remedy and restore your decadently despondent heart. My favorite song, Drowning, entering with the heaviest of bass drum, sliding into baselines evoking the ancient crypt slamming shut (with you forever inside). And, of course, the wispy hauntings of high pitched synth notes: as the top of winter tree branches whistling in a wicked wind.

“You’ll be back. You’ll be back. When the hunger hurts so much it knows no reason! Then you’ll need to feed. And then you need me to show you how (Miriam Blaylock,” The Hunger 1983).

support great music, buy music