Bacchus meets Blondie in NYSSA’s Shake Me Where I’m Foolish , out today on Six Shooter Records to mark Imbolc. The experience of listening to Shake Me Where I’m Foolish is one of total synthesis, a collapse of boundaries between centuries, a conjuring of wildness from within.
From Montreal to Dublin to Berlin in the fall of 2023, and to SXSW and The Great Escape this spring, the Toronto-based artist’s travels mirror the geographic, mythological and polytheistic touchstones of her sophomore collection. Transportive and borderless, NYSSA’s songs ride the four winds to distant lands.
Named for a line in a poem by Chicago free verse poet Carl Sandburg, ‘Baby Song of the Four Winds,’ Shake Me Where I’m Foolish invokes rebirth, freshness and freedom. The north wind, a cold plunge, a grotto of pleasure, going out beyond the breakwater, a night run amok: There are ways to break loose.
From the first track, ‘The Initiate,’ NYSSA opens the wardrobe to a Punk Rock Narnia, an otherworld of her own design where ’70s riffs carry ancient myths. Buckle up for ‘The Mystery,’ a Cars-esque retelling of the secret rites of the cult of Demeter. Stumble over an imagined Jersey shore in ‘Good Kind of Bad,’ a song that makes no apologies for its irresistibly irresponsible advice. Wallow exquisitely in ‘Creature 2 Creature,’ a song that makes a hero of anyone who has refused to feel better, à la Magnetic Fields’ ‘I Don’t Want To Get Over You.’
Will you catch your breath or lose your grip on reality as the tension builds in the penultimate song ‘My Gemini,’ a voyage through deep subconscious imagery and intuition. A dream both lucid and lurid, this imaginary travelog provides the artistic, thematic, epic heart of the album. The song hurtles headlong into the nightosphere as NYSSA goes where she must, unafraid to leave behind what doesn’t serve the call of her wild. With its fiery finish, ‘My Gemini’ erupts, its chaos volcanic, ancient and cleansing.
Toronto pagan-punk-poet NYSSA has put her hands into the lion’s mouth, gathering her performing and songwriting powers to conjure the unruly energy of rock n’ roll. Out from under fear’s thumb, NYSSA now sings about wild things, old gods, romance-beyond-borders, and the exorcism of trauma. She has quested, and she has returned.
The goal is fevered connection, a ritual-sense of music as communal release. NYSSA keens and wails and brings her audience along with her to a place of deep feeling, movement, and joy. Her lyrics are poetic and clear, lunar, eerie, angry; NYSSA’s voice is the strong container for all of it. As Dionysus would want it, over-abundance is the way. Her rapturous music has been praised and played by Irish tastemakers like RTÉ 2fm , Newstalk , GoldenPlec , Buzz.ie, Entertainment.ie , and others.
Guided by the incantation and invocation of the three C’s: Collaboration, Choreo, Covenhood!, NYSSA’s sound and stories run deep into ancient mythos, Celtic lore and back through our modern idols. Re-swaggering, re-wilding hyper-masc night moves and magick hips (think Jagger, Mink Deville, Danzig), NYSSA’s magnetic, elastic ways make satyrs of us all.
Long-listed for the 2021 Polaris prize for her debut solo album Girls Like Me , NYSSA’s sophomore album, Shake Me Where I’m Foolish , is out now via Six Shooter Records.
Track List
1. The Initiate
2. The Mystery
3. Breakup Party
4. Blessèd Touch
5. Werewolf
6. Good Kinda Bad
7. Death and Desire
8. Creature 2 Creature
9. No More Bodies
10. My Gemini
11. The Hell I Raise
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