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Tag: Cal McIntyre

  • Allie X’s “Reunite”: A Plea for Reconciliation—And Also Thematically Aligned With Lily Allen’s “Back to the Start”

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    On the heels of releasing the solipsistic anthem, “Is Anybody Out There?,” Allie X has already unleashed the second single from HIGGY a.k.a. Happiness Is Going to Get You. Titled “Reunite,” it is, in its way an appropriate thematic companion to “Is Anybody Out There?” in that after wondering, “Is anybody listening ‘cause I’m not hearing anything/I think I might be in this world alone/Is anybody out there?/I don’t know,” Allie X starts to also question if perhaps she threw away a certain past relationship too prematurely. And, maybe if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t feel quite so lonely.

    A loneliness that comes across in the wistful, “ultra-throwback” musical intro to the track, which is all harpsichord for the first seventeen seconds. This followed by about a two-second pause before leading into the stabbing electro sound that Allie X is known for, achieved in this instance with co-production help from Bastian Langebæk (who also worked with her on “Is Anybody Out There?”). In the accompanying “visualizer,” Allie X is not only once again in her “Infant Marie” guise, but is also “just kind of existing” inside of a giant, transparent cube as she plays the harpsichord for a taxidermied hooded crow (which Allie has nicknamed, what else, “Higgy”).

    Upon completing her “introductory flourish,” however, X ceases to play the instrument (after all, that isn’t the sound of the song anymore—though she will go back to pretending to play the keys later on) in favor of singing along to the beat as she recounts, “Trauma’s complicated/When you went and changed, I disassociated/It was you that I hated, the simple one to blame/When you’re a child in pain, and I/I didn’t mean to hurt you [this recalling John Lennon saying the same on “Jealous Guy”]/I’ve been a maniac/But now I want you back.”

    With this narrative established within the first minute of the song, it instantly recalls one of the strongest lyrical comparisons to “Reunite”: an “obscure” track from Lily Allen’s 2009 album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, called “Back to the Start” (which also features an “esoteric” musical instrument in the form of a glockenspiel). Written for Allen’s half-sister, Sarah Owen, it’s an apology for being, as Allie X, would call it, a bit of a “maniac” toward her, especially during her teenage years. As Allen would describe, “We had a rocky relationship for years and years and years and it was just getting to the point where we just couldn’t argue like teenagers anymore, so I played it to her a long time ago and it’s kinda worked, we’ve sorted a lot of things out.” Perhaps the same can and will happen for Allie X, with whoever she may have written “Reunite” for.

    And while Allie X’s track may or may not be directed at an ex-lover (though it also functions as a “catch-all” kind of an apology track, applicable to a friend or family member), it bears the same general sense of regret over having acted “shit” toward someone you were once close to. Having pushed them away with your deliberately volatile behavior. Something that comes across in earnest via Allie X’s chorus, “And I’m not mad anymore/In fact now I’m doing fine/I’ve gotten wiser with age/Will you let me back into your life?/I know, it wasn’t your fault/And though it might have been mine/We were just doing our best/Maybe you and me can reunite.”

    The hopeful suggestion behind that “maybe” correlates to Allen’s own proposition in her chorus for “Back to the Start,” “I don’t know why I felt the need to keep it up for oh so long/It’s all my fault, I’m sorry, you did absolutely nothing wrong/I don’t know why I felt the need to drag it out for all these years/All the pain I’ve caused you, the constant flowing of your tears/Believe me when I say that I cannot apologize enough/When all you ever wanted from me was a token of my love/And if it’s not too late, could you please find it deep within your heart/To try and go back, go back to the start?”

    Allie X seems to feel a similar way, adding to her spiel/plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, “So many years/I wasted my time/Disconnecting from the simple truth, ooh/I separated myself, body and mind/I should have listened/Should have listened/I should have listened to you.”

    And so it is that within each of these apologies that each respective chanteuse admits not only to their own wrongdoing, but also to the fact that they were actually largely responsible for the rift in question—no small feat when it comes to delivering a meaningful kind of “sorry.” One that even Nancy Downs in The Craft might have trouble (Fairuza) balking at. In Allen’s case, she goes so far as get slightly meta with the assurance, “This is not just a song, I intend to put these words into action/I hope that it sums up the way that I feel to your satisfaction.”

    In the visualizer for “Reunite,” the allure of such a heartfelt apology is further conveyed by the sudden appearance of someone else outside the glass box, dressed in similar “Victorian attire” to Allie X. Someone who was clearly moved enough to materialize out of nowhere and listen to X’s sincere entreaty. However, the fact that the person outside the box (played by X’s “body double,” Rosie Carney), obfuscated and, therefore, “unknowable,” is dressed to look like Allie X also infers that maybe the person she’s asking forgiveness of could even be herself. The younger version that likely didn’t treat her with as much kindness and understanding as the current one does. That there are also moments in the visualizer (which is directed by Cal McIntyre, just like “Is Anybody Out There?”) when Allie X is reflected in the glass further adds to the validity of this theory. One that suggests she would like to reunite/reconnect with a past and inner self that she once acted so cruelly toward.

    Whoever the song is “truly” aimed at, however, is irrelevant. For, just like Allen’s “Back to the Start,” the theme of pleading for someone you did wrong to not only forgive you, but also “reunite” with you is one that many will find resonant. In addition to possibly not getting that desired forgiveness and reignited closeness after asking for it. Because, sadly, the biblical adage, “Ask and you shall receive” is rarely true.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Allie X’s “Is Anybody Out There?” Captures the Loneliness and Insecurity of Solipsism Perfectly

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    Allie X herself remarked to fans (which she labels “X’s”) that, while they might not have been expecting a new era so soon after Girl With No Face (especially since she’s been known to take three and four year breaks in between albums), the new era of HIGGY, as she’s branded her next record, couldn’t be stopped or contained. And time will tell as to what HIGGY might be an acronym for, but, in the interim, her lead single from the record, “Is Anybody Out There?,” provides a glimpse inside the mind of “a woman in her clear cube”—this being one of the labels she’s given her new alter ego, used to describe herself in the captions of photos whilst appearing in a clear cube amidst such settings as a Jack in the Box parking lot and the woods. Divergent locations that reveal, perhaps, that no matter where you go, there you are—trapped inside your mind with your tortured thoughts.

    Because the cube, of course, is a metaphor for the isolation of being inside one’s own “vacuum-sealed” brain, as it were. The pain and agony of only knowing for certain that your mind is all that’s sure to exist, and not really being able to comprehend who another person is because you can never comprehend for sure what they’re thinking—or, hell, if they even have a mind (an ever more valid suspicion these days). Even those who might be closest to you, whether as a friend or creative collaborator. In the case of the latter, Allie X addresses the sorrow of losing the person who helped her co-write and co-produce the song, Bram Inscore, acknowledging his 2023 suicide via the lyrics, “Genius that I wrote this with said, ‘So long,’ took his life/If I stay too long here I don’t think that I’ll survive.” Indeed, this notion of not being able to survive in a world so cruel and cold that it makes everything about life even more dangerous than it is at a baseline level is a recurring motif in “Is Anybody Out There?” A guttural scream demanding to know if anyone else happens to notice how fucked up this all is, or has everybody gone totally comatose?

    Hence, Allie X’s aura of combined resignation and earnestness when she sings, “Gotta get ready for the rapture, stop my blasphemy/Is anybody out there?/Is anybody out there?/Is anybody listening ‘cause I’m not hearing anything/I think I might be in this world alone/Is anybody out there?/I don’t know.” Being a Los Angeles resident for over a decade now (she moved there in 2013 to pursue her music career), Allie X also has an even more innate sense of isolation/“living in a bubble” than the average person (read: a non-Angeleno). Not to mention a greater sensitivity to and understanding of the devastation wrought by the multiple wildfires that ravaged the city at the beginning of January.

    So it is that she honors her adopted city (and the adopted city of so many others) when she says, “Santa Ana winds, they came, they scorned us and we burned/Now the insurance brokers got morose and taciturn’d.” Her poetic turn of phrase is in keeping with her “Victorian garb,” as she described it in one of her promos for the single (a mock tabloid about a “strangeling” who “rock[ed] ladies of the country club”—a Del Rey-ian kind of sentiment). Further intensified by a hairstyle befitting a very kooky queen. In fact, it’s not totally unlike the “coiffure” of what Helena Bonham Carter’s Queen of Hearts (a.k.a. the Red Queen) sported in Alice in Wonderland. Just much higher and more divided into two distinct “pieces” on each side.

    Referring to herself as the “Infant Marie” throughout these visuals that show her encased in a glass cube, Allie X provides comfort to those who have grown more fearful in recent times of what it means to keep enduring. The irony of present-day survival being that, if you do keep staying here too long, you won’t survive. Certainly not with the newly-minted emotional and physical rigors of the twenty-first century.

    And so, once more speaking to the increasing perils of living under various governments that treat humans as non-sentient (though maybe that’s only fair considering that humans treat every other living thing like they’re non-sentient), Allie X mentions another highly specific incident (and one that would have also been a big deal in L.A.): “A million Yogi tea bags got recalled for pesticide/If I stay too long here, I don’t think that I’ll survive.” These horrified reflections are complemented by the subtle psychedelic sound of the track, further amplified by The Beatles-esque tone of it (think: sonic elements of “Dear Prudence”).

    As for the accompanying visualizer, directed by Cal McIntyre (because “visualizers” are basically music videos now), Allie X of course appears in what is now her “signature” clear box, situated in what looks like a recording studio. Pacing the confines with a conductor’s baton in hand, her earnestness and desperation are most apparent in the delivery of her final answer to the question posed in the song. And that answer is: “I don’t know” (Lelaina Pierce of Reality Bites is familiar with realizing that, too).

    Alien undertones of the song aside, there’s also, of course, the fact that Pink Floyd once posed an “inverse” sort of question on “Comfortably Numb”: Hello? (hello, hello, hello)/Is there anybody in there?/Just nod if you can hear me/Is there anyone home?” Which perhaps just goes to show that, for quite some time now, humans have been wondering not just if there’s “anybody” out there, but if there’s anybody with a shred of humanity still left out there.

    Perhaps this being the concern that bridges the endless divide caused by solipsism. For it’s the one thing that many can presently seem to agree on. Because, when taken to mean “the belief that only your own experiences and existence can be known,” Allie X reminds that many of us do know one common experience: loneliness. Feeling as though no one can ever truly understand us, or the pain we’re going through. And “Is Anybody Out There?” absolutely cuts to the core of that feeling on a visceral level.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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