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It's been two years since Erika M. Anderson swept in from whatever tornado of fuzz and grime carried her up to Portland from Los Angeles and deposited her on the doorstep of the indie-rock world at large. In 2011, EMA released her first solo record, Past Life Martyred Saints, and for a minute there, her bristling, serrated doom-folk was the talk of the blogosphere. I mean, when you introduce yourself by declaring "Fuck California/You made me boring," heads are bound to turn.
"Satellites," the first track off Anderson's upcoming second album The Future's Void (and debut for indie bigwig Matador), is even more attention-grabbing. Beginning with a rhythm initially built entirely out of radio static, the song gathers both momentum and a gravitational pull, opening up to a swirling black hole of violins and pianos and drums and more hissing, buzzing, distorting and squealing, as Anderson pleads to someone (God? NASA? George Clooney's character in Gravity?) to "open the satellites." Despite her past predilections toward Lou Reed-y street poetry, "Satellite of Love" this is safely not.
The Future's Void doesn't have an official release date yet other than "spring 2014," and Matador promises an official video for "Satellites" in the new year as well. But I don't know, this "watching a VHS tape of an experimental public-access TV show with bad tracking in a shitty apartment" stopgap is kind of doing it for me.
WWeek 2015