Soul Glo, Audre Lorde, and Music as Both Intimacy and Rebellion
On the importance and complexity of communities
When Audre Lorde was young, her mother told her and her siblings: “Remember to be sisters in the presence of strangers.” This sentiment is expressed in the beginning of her biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and never really leaves. Years and years pass, only reinforcing the necessity of this statement, though the meanings of “sisters” and “strangers” change along the way.
I finished reading Zami the week before Philadelphia quartet Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems arrived. I felt a rush of excitement and appreciation when I saw Lorde’s I Am Your Sister on the cover, especially when the record is on Epitaph Records, which, despite having roots in punk, is known for having a predominantly white cis male fanbase (Mannequin Pussy and THICK have spoken about the hate they’ve received by fans of the label). To see the presence of Lorde in punk is a beautiful thing.
It’s also inevitable. The genre has historically valued community, and this has persisted to current times with bands like Turnstile continuing to emphasize that. This was highlighted in a recent interview for The New York Times:
Jenn Pelly: Some of the lyrics from “Glow On” specifically address loneliness and isolation. How does it feel to shout “Can’t be the only one!” at the center of thousands of people who are shouting it back?”
Frontman Brendan Yates: Even when everything is chaotic — even when people are jumping off the stage and bodies are flying everywhere — there’s a weird peace in playing the songs and a weird peace in people singing them. It’s kind of like when it’s raining and the weather is crazy outside, but it feels peaceful.
He also talked about one of the first shows he attended after quarantine. It was mostly local Baltimore bands, but because of that collective post-quarantine desire to go out, there were over 500 kids there, “and every single person was so engaged,” he said. “I sensed a greater appreciation for everything.”
When it comes to the importance of community, it can be incredibly hard to put into words the ecstasy of belonging to something bigger than yourself. Yates, though, captures it well with the image of a peaceful storm and the feeling of a greater appreciation for everything. Both of these are at the core of Lorde’s work and Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems.
In an interview for New Noise Magazine, Soul Glo vocalist Pierce Jordan says that the band’s name is a reference to the way “the band is a representation of our innermost selves.” He continues:
It’s about sharing and communication. A band is a team effort, or at least ours is, and we succeed when we are open and honest with each other about who we are. I’ve only ever been able to make music in groups so letting my innermost self-shine through to the group is my primary way of communicating my feelings and ideas.
Community, in Lorde’s work, is love, and love is a way of seeing, giving her “endless and wonderful re-discoveries of the ordinary.” Through connecting with others, you find out more about yourself and the world around you. At the same time, community is a survival mechanism, and it is not simple and easy; more often than not, it is complex and comes with baggage, but it always yields positive results nonetheless. “However imperfectly, we tried to build a community of sorts where we could, at the very least, survive within a world we correctly perceived to be hostile to us,” she writes of her group of lesbian friends in Manhattan in the 1950s. The bond between them is infinitely inspiring:
We all cared for and about each other, sometimes with more or less understanding, regardless of who was entangled with whom at any given time, and there was always a place to sleep and something to eat and a listening ear for anyone who wandered into the crew. And there was always somebody calling you on the telephone, to interrupt the fantasies of suicide.
We all cared for and about each other, sometimes with more or less understanding. When Soul Glo are reckoning with a friend who disappointed them, they contemplate: “Sometimes I wonder how it seems to you from your point of view, / because only inside my pain can I be that comfortable,” they wail on “GODBLESSYALLREALGOOD.” Community often comes at a cost, and Soul Glo grapple with this throughout the songs, navigating through labyrinths of letdowns. However, by the end of the album, there’s revelation and faith in friendships: “I became vigilant through hypersensitivity / Something as small as a sigh can become a tell to me. / While relearning to trust my mind, I recognized I still knew sincerity / through the people who simply never sent me down the line of its questioning.”
An interview with Soul Glo for Bandcamp Daily highlights the amount of collaboration that went into this record. There is a plethora of guest vocalists and instrumentalists; Jordan says that he tried to recruit people who weren’t involved in punk or hardcore to expand the sound. John Morrison writes: “And by inviting the other children of the diaspora in to get on the mic and speak their truths, the revolution becomes interconnected, widespread as it is irresistible.” It is accessible and eclectic, appealing to fans of hardcore, metal, hip hop, industrial, and really any backgrounds.
Along with the amount of collaboration on this album, the liner notes include a ‘Special Thanks’ overflowing with names. One line reads: “Thank you everyone who came to a show, housed and fed us, smoked us out, or bought any kind of anything off me when I was out on the bike making my rounds.” It is clear that the music could not exist without this.
“Can any one of us here still afford to believe that efforts to reclaim the future can be private or individual?” Lorde asks in “Learning from the 1960s.” “Can anyone here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of any one particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class?”
In the same way that the revolution transcends identity, Soul Glo’s music transcends genre, letting their revolution take form in explosive spurts of screamo adorned with soaring saxophones like on “Thumbsucker,” or in blistering, unabating rap like on “Driponomics.”
Lorde describes love and the erotic in intuitive, poetic descriptions that I imagine also convey what’s it like to make music with other people. I imagine it is a kind of “soaring wonder […] guided by a power that flowed through me[.]” In “Uses of the Erotic,” she defines the erotic as the “creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.” Music is, then, not only a sacred form of intimacy, but also a radical act of rebellion.
Remembering to be sisters in the presence of strangers is a way of survival, but, at some point in the process, this intimacy and rebellion materialize and the bond becomes inexplicably special. Like when it’s raining and the weather is crazy outside, but it feels peaceful.
Glad I'm not the only one seeing the clear intentionality behind having Lorde on the cover. This was a great read, Danielle.