“God, it is so hard growing up,” we lament alongside our earnest hero, while we attempt to clear a little clutter from our conscience. We’re inherently flawed, but often that’s what makes us wondrous to the folks who love us, or who would love to love us, most.
Sometimes the courage to muster up the words to express a feeling is hard-pressed to be found sometimes we’re late, we’re careless, our dishes are piling up and we stumble drunkenly into green rooms after shows at which we did not even perform. We’ve all got a bad habit or two we’re trying to kick. As the song tumbles forward, they deliver verses with compounding frustration until the chorus resurfaces again, “gleaming and profound” (to use Rosie’s own lyric), with a hook that, fittingly, won’t quit.
Rosie tucker gay bar lyrics cracked#
Angular and self-reliant chords announce the track (possibly a harmonic reference to my favorite song, “Beautiful Machine,” off of Tucker’s first record?), until we hear Rosie’s ever-charismatic lilt, like moonlight through the cracked blinds, splayed across carpeted floor, blushing with retrospective wisdom and weaving trepidation. Meanwhile, the music chugs along in odd-metered confidence. In “Habit,” Rosie Tucker struggles with the inability to break themselves of exactly this, a “bad habit of holding tongue.” Rosie is apologizing right out of the gate for refraining from expressing themselves when they wanted to most, or perhaps for never snagging the opportunity to do so at all. Nearly every track on NNNNNN is worthy of a single premiere, but after five months of witnessing Rosie weave their loom from a few steps closer, I’ve been charged with the honorable task of sharing words on their latest single, “Habit.”Īs children, many of us were taught to watch our mouths, that if we didn’t have anything nice to say we shouldn’t say anything at all, to speak when only when spoken to, and on and on from the loose lips of the adults who were warning us.
Conversely, I contend that Rosie Tucker, an otherworldly songsmith at the loom of timelessness, is far too unignorable for me to ever believe any part of their side of that story.Įqually unbelievable was the thoughtful, elegantly ear-catching sophomore LP, Never Not Never Not Never Not, that arrived in my inbox in the form of a humble Google Drive link after some pesky persistence on my part. Rosie will also insist that I ignored them and instead spoke to their guitarist about tone or amps or something else formidably nerdy. They will insist I was nonchalantly brandishing an empty flask of since-polished-off tequila while, in stark contrast, I remember having having a “chill” and “sober” night at the gig after a relentless Monday at work. I met Rosie Tucker in the green room of The Echo after missing their set. But they’re set apart in their specificity, self-awareness, and obvious care for the craft of songwriting and the practice of making art.
Made with close collaborators Anna Arboles, Wolfy, and Jessica Reed, who form a muscular, guitar-driven quartet, Tucker’s songs call to mind a few contemporaries: Hop Along, Frankie Cosmos, Mitski. Like them, Tucker uses emotionally rich images of the world, and while the lyrics have political implications, politics are not the first concern of the songs. Marie, Sibylle Baier, Norma Tanega, Karen Dalton. Starting with the first track “Gay Bar” and then throughout their new album Never Not Never Not Never Not out Maon the New Professor label, Tucker’s songs talk with and echo the queer, blacklisted, and forgotten female songwriters of the 1960s: Dusty Springfield, Buffy St. Only as they progress do they reveal bigger themes. They start in conversation with an immediate environment: small, detailed, characters and landscapes drawn vividly, with life and wit. Rosie Tucker’s songs are worlds unto themselves.