California's Chloe Gallardo shares 'God Is Dead'
Chloe Gallardo
Announces debut album 'Defamator'
Released 12th May 2023 on Taxi Gauche Records.
Listen to 'God Is Dead' here
"Instrumentally this song is one of my favorites because we got to track with my old, broken omnichord. It was really hard to get a good take because the buttons we needed would stop working halfway through the song but I think the brokenness really adds to the feeling of the song."
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With the launch of her debut album Defamator via Taxi Gauche Records, Chloe Gallardo has achieved by far her boldest, and most mature collection of work to date. Emblematic of a genre-mish-mash of “dark shoegaze-inspired indie rock”, the ten-track set journeys the listener through a tightly-strung sequence of cautionary tales. Detailing her bruising experiences of relationship trauma and abusive partners, Defamator eases the listener across these disturbing subjects via the tranquil transcendence of its song.
Written mostly during peak-pandemic times in Gallardo’s bedroom - (“you can hear how scared and alone I was.”) - the songs that made their way onto Defamator arose from a concerted period of healing. Drawing from the teachings of therapy, the songwriting process gave her the means to channel some deeply entrenched emotional scars. “In my first few sessions my therapist told me that I needed to let myself get angry at the things that have happened to me and the way people have treated me.”, she explains. “It really unlocked something in me. So this album is me allowing myself to be angry at a handful of people in my life that have mistreated me.”
This venting of anger is implicit throughout the record. The album’s title - Gallardo’s own neologism - uses the concepts of “defamation” and “defamatory speech” to innovate a kind of pejorative accusation. As a result, it is like we are actively listening to Gallardo forcefully take command of her past. Of the title track she explains:“The song ‘Defamator’ is about someone who spoke untruthful things about me in order to manipulate me and the way people perceived me and I felt that was an underlying theme in most of the album.”
There’s more stripped back affairs - ‘There Will Be Blood”;”The Way’ - songs which gently seethe and purr like Grouper’s spectral dream-pop; Gallardo’s fluttering folk-ish voice gloriously pushed to forefront; crunching overdrive solos heavily muted in the background like a strangled cries. And between these two extremes, there’s the soft electronic filling, the abstract interlude tracks, that faulty omnichord that could barely survive a take on “God is Dead'', but which captures the fractured atmosphere perfectly. Here, Defamator takes direct influence from Broadcast’s 2005 classic Tender Buttons.
But beneath all this finesse, nuance and polish, it’s the power and dedication of Gallardo’s songwriting that shines the brightest. “It’s pretty weird releasing them now because I was so sad and broken at that time of my life and now my life is so different.” she confesses, “I still feel it’s important to release the songs though. I grew into the person that I am from those experiences and maybe someone out there can relate to what I’ve written about.”
1. Bloodline
2. God Is Dead
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Defamator
5. [Untitled]
6. New Jersey
7. To See You Go
8. The Way
9. Last Dance
10. New Jersey (Reprise)
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