Portraits Of Tracy - Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV! EP Review
Across five wildly different tracks, Portraits Of Tracy packs hardcore fury, surreal storytelling and sentimental love into the best EP of the year so far.
Portraits Of Tracy is one of the best musical discoveries I’ve made this year. She’s new to me, though hardly new to making records: after hearing this EP, I went back through her earlier work, and Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV! feels like her most fully realised project yet. It’s also the best EP I’ve heard all year. Tracy grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has spoken about the influence of DC hardcore, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and MTV on these songs. Across five tracks, she takes all that and makes something loud, strange, funny and, by the end, unexpectedly tender.
The short ‘Intro’ has a playful, restless feel, though it ends just as it starts to find its feet. The EP properly announces itself with ‘This Song May Or May Not Be About An Alt-Right Influencer’, which charges in on a propulsive guitar riff and screamed vocals before breaking into a surprisingly melodic chorus. Its anger has a specific target: a neo-Nazi who enjoyed Tracy’s art while standing against her people and culture.
‘Caught In A Jam’ might be the best thing here. It begins with syncopated synths, then brings in a thicker line that gives the song its stride. Tracy keeps adding little details: wobbling sounds around the chorus, a lovely piano break, harmonies that gather as the bass starts jumping between octaves again. The lyrics tell of a threatening encounter that takes increasingly strange turns, jumping from an alleyway to a club and then, somehow, Mars. It gets stranger without losing its sense of humour, and Tracy eventually turns the tables on the man who has been pursuing her: ‘I tapped him on his shoulder and sent a kick to his balls.’ Now he’s caught in a jam. The synth dissolves at the end, bringing this brilliantly odd little story to a close.
‘Royal Courts (Great Misfortune)’ changes the setting again. It opens with Tracy’s voice and a strummed acoustic guitar, then bursts into one of those riffs that feels immediately familiar even though you can’t place it. The bass line is fantastic, as is the reach of her vocal in the chorus. Tracy seems to take on the role of the Devil here, claiming to have brought the plague and been there when Judas betrayed Jesus. She spends the rest of the song taunting someone who thinks they can escape her, before the repeated ‘off with your head’ and a guitar solo bring it to a wonderfully over-the-top close.
There isn’t a dull moment on ‘Halli Step / Raider Klan Shit’, either. The repeated ‘one, two, three’ and the layers of vocals make it sound like two songs playing at once, somehow fitting together perfectly. By the end, the drums and bass are enormous, with voices and harmonies piling up around them. Amid all that noise, Tracy keeps trying to erase or replace the ‘animal within’, then considers releasing it instead. The repetition makes the struggle feel ongoing, caught between changing for someone you love and accepting who you are.
After all that, ‘My Life Is Loving You’ is a gorgeous closer. Tracy’s voice is soft at first, set against a piano melody that leaves plenty of space around it. The song is unashamedly sentimental, but it earns its sweetness. When she sings about love feeling as natural as breathing, you can hear how much she means it. Strings, harmonies and drums gradually fill out the arrangement without losing that intimacy. It’s another song that somehow feels like you’ve known it for years.
Tracy’s voice holds all these shifts together, moving from Kim Gordon-style distorted vocals on ‘This Song May Or May Not Be About An Alt-Right Influencer’ to the soft, open-hearted singing of ‘My Life Is Loving You’. The songs are brilliant, and the little choices in the production and instrumentation give each one more to discover on another listen. The slightly underwritten ‘Intro’ is the only real disappointment. Across the remaining four tracks, Tracy sounds capable of just about anything. If her next full-length release is this consistent, it could be one of the best albums of the decade.
