Channy Leaneagh of Poliça is my new Emily Haines. I can’t count the hours on an entire nation’s toes the total time I spent steeped into Haine’s deceptively, explosive tracks. However, since Metric went all theoretical and lost a little of the human in the process, I’ve been on the search for a twisted feminine spirit that beckons me like one fucked up siren. Sure, ‘Dark Star’ ,with its insane chorus, almost did me in there; but the video for ‘Tiff’–which, awesomely, is NSFW or the squeamish of heart and has Channy literally waterboarding and gruesomely torturing herself– was when her music became kindred.

I’m not saying I do any such things, just that I think the video was a metaphor for the ways that mercurial people all lacerate themselves in one way or another: through addiction, through an inability to connect, through swirly nights in sadness seeking an answer,  through punching on your chest hoping for a skip of a beat. After all,  love is a mess and as Channy sings on ‘Smug’

Boys make me way too tired
All the work they require

and this track is one explicit exploration of that idea–one that’s always at the forefront of my mind. But perhaps what makes Leaneagh’s music so strong is the way that it never rests on easy laurels, it really finds  a way to dig into your veins–‘Smug’ being no smug exception. Around what should be the lead in to an insufferable, sing songy chorus (If you were in love with me/I could never tell), the song doesn’t play on its rise in tempo; and instead slinks further into its darkness, relying on the strength of Leaneagh’s voice and the swoony synths to carry the day.

A lesser artist would shudder at carrying the weight of a such a song structure, but as ‘Say My Name’ and now ‘Smug’ have shown us, this relative formlessness is one of upcoming LP Shulasmith ‘s most impactful contributions to songwriting.  Everyone loves an anthem to shout to–fuck knows I do–but these songs  you’re meant to simmer with, to swish around in your soul while staring at the bottom of a tequila bottle that you circle around in your hand like its a wine glass getting air–a false, classy version of self-destruction, if you will. Nonetheless, these are anthems still at their core, it just takes a dark night–or a dark fuck of a life like me–to  see how diving into the song’s depths lets it dive into the deep sea caverns of you, reconnecting tendon after tendon of an eviscerated heart.

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