cumgirl8
phantasea pharm
4AD
“I just took a huge shit,” Veronika Vilim of NYC-based quartet cumgirl8 seductively announces on phantasea pharm EP highlight “picture party.” With their bowels clear, they’re ready for their closeup. “I’m on Dramamine on the mezzanine / If I fall down and bleed, take a picture of me.” The beat is an animatronic house of horrors with electronic cat cries, wiggling synths, and backing whines from “drag terrorist” Christeene. It’s peak seductive horror—the sweet spot that the out-of-this-world group strive for. “We want people to be scared or turned on, but hopefully both,” drummer Chase Lombardo said nearly three years ago. With their first release on their new label home, 4AD, the curious quartet tease gripping fragments of their unfathomable world.
phantasea pharm is also the foursome’s strangest and most diverse-sounding project to date. It was unthinkable that they’d top an electro-punk track like “i wanna be” from 2021’s RIPcumgirl8 EP, which was crafted from stuttering animal cries and featured lyrics like “I wanna be a sandwich” and “I wanna be a temporary tattoo.” Although the animatronic voices are still there in subtlety, the new EP hones in on the chaos of an animal farm rather than taking literal inspiration from Old MacDonald. There’s also plenty of vomiting, oozing, melting, and all-around mess to boot.
Part of phantasea pharm’s intrigue comes from its hodge-podge alien sound. The all-analog EP pingpongs between Cocteau Twins’ silvery fluidity, Siouxsie and the Banshees’ post-punk unease, and whomping house music. At times it can feel overwhelming, jumping from spacey shoegaze into electrified new wave before diving into unhinged dance music.
Although cumgirl8’s overwhelming charm is central to the band, it can be a disservice to some of their hard revelations that aren’t liberating shock value. “I hardly said a real thought from my mouth all week,” goes one line from “dead pixels.” Bassist Lida Fox’s vocals swim upstream against sleepy, echoing guitars and sludgy drums. “We contest our pain but can’t say what we mean / When I speak I can’t talk, I don’t wanna compete.” cumgirl8’s work seems to expose language’s weakness, expanding the ways in which we communicate the truest versions of our feelings and, ultimately, ourselves.
The EP’s lead single “cicciolina”—named after the radical Hungarian-Italian anti-nuclear weapon advocate and porn star—encapsulates the group’s desire to subvert and disrupt in peaceful, sexy ways. “cumgirl8 is clickbait, like a DM from a cam-girl,” Lombardo once explained. “The name is founded on the only emotions that seem to really affect people… First, we draw you in; then we radicalize you.” Even on their scuzzy disco-punk ode to their hero, cumgirl8 admit they’re still growing: “I wish I could articulate myself more clearly, but there’s too much glass in my mind.” Once cumgirl8 figures out how to clean up some of the less poignant glass shards in their music, their radicalization efforts will be unstoppable.
