No Bra — She Was A Butcher
Directed by Dean Chalkley and Ciaran O’Shea.
I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that I feel a sense of accomplishment after successfully trudging though an entire No Bra song. Her music is like getting a shot — it’s good for you, but you kind of dread it, but then it’s all over before you know it and realize it wasn’t such a difficult ordeal. I equate No Bra more with sound art than I do with music that you grind to at the fag bar — it’s much more Richard Chartier or Matmos than Chris Clark or Squarepusher — It’s genuinely challenging (think Björk’s Pluto without the generosity of a melody) and I haven’t even gotten to the visuals.
Even to people who spent their adolescence in tranny hooker bars, No Bra’s sexual ambiguity is quite confrontational and somewhat startling. I still haven’t figured out whether or not Suzanne started her (his?) life as a man or a woman. The clothes and lack of clothes, the hair, the (sometimes) Hitler mustashe, the aloofness: it all works together to create an intensely curious package of music-comma-art.
* To the gorgeous Londoners who may stumble across this post, No Bra is performing (for free!) at The Social this Tuesday, 28 October.
