When verified Elon-Musk’s-X subscribers, midlife-crisis-aged comedians, and other peddlers of bad-faith talking points on- and offline skewer what they view to be the inanities of trans existence, the reality behind these perceived antisocial behaviors can often be summed up in one simple fact: to be trans and visible is often deeply disorienting and usually extremely dangerous in this country. Imagine closing your Netflix tab promoting a new standup special from one of the most famous comedians of our lifetime that’s based around attacking your identity for no particular reason and leaving your apartment only to be harassed for trying to use a public restroom.
It’s this specific sense of disorientation and danger that DC post-punks Ekko Astral channel into rage on their debut LP Pink Balloons, a collection of 10 seething tracks taking shots at the Chappelles of the world and addressing the “everyday dangers of living,” as they put it (to say nothing of the career-first dating scene of their highly competitive hometown). Communicated through garage-rock production value and an edge unique to the legendary local hardcore scene the band grew out of, the record feels like a totally rational response to the everyday chaotic-evil encounters we have online and in the real world as vocalist Jael Holzman puts a mirror up to the brainworms we let take over as we argue with strangers about how “Bon Iver” is pronounced on a post sandwiched between images depicting the aftermath of genocide funded by the White House.
With the album arriving today—yes, on a Wednesday; this is allowed—the band took us track by track through Pink Balloons, citing how reference points ranging from Irish neo-folk troupe Lankum to Kurt Vonnegut’s portfolio of pathetic-yet-sympathetic antagonists helped shape the LP and its “fucked-up hands-across-America image” of queer solidarity in an upside-down world. Stream the album and read along below.
1. “Head Empty Blues”
An album opener intended to terrorize you. “Head Empty Blues” is about the everyday dangers of living. You’ve got to carry a knife everywhere; you’re afraid of being buried alive before you find your friends; there’s stalkers outside, so the only way to find community is to post pictures of yourself online and get lost in the internet brain rot.
2. “Baethoven”
A funhouse mirror of a song about the pain of being yourself. Having a larger-than-life personality in a nation that wants to downsize you. Bringing up that one unfortunate fact about the world when everyone else around you just wants to stay distracted. The key part of the song is the second verse: “There’s nothing endless, there’s no Frank Ocean / You should let me be your classic love /I’ll be your Bae-thoven.” Nothing’s as clean and pristine as a Frank Ocean song in this world right now. But there is us—and you—and that’s what you should love. Because that’s what’s here now, and is here for you. The authentic self in all its glory.
3. “uwu Type Beat”
A three-minute rhythmic barrage covered in hot pink paint, gussied up with fuzz bass and blaring guitars. I wrote these lyrics about how many trash Tinder dates women go on in our nation’s capital. Here, the first question anyone wants to ask is “Who do you work for?” Social climbers and striving, a lot of it. Some of us do want to find real love. But others just want that “uwu type beat”—a cloyingly perfect superego vision of romance in the digital age, as one dimensional as a rip-off Clams Casino beat you found on YouTube.
4. “On Brand”
This is the song. And it’s dedicated to all the people in DC who make money off of people dying. It’s about women stomping around town in “cheetah print pink pumps made by federal prisoners.” They’re all badass and brutal with bittersweet, ironic lives. It’s a strutting song, meant to be played at full volume on headphones while one walks…like Nancy Sinatra through a noise machine.
5. “Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between L’enfant and Eastern Market”
The album begins with the first lines of this poem by my friend Ari Drennen called “Out at Dinner,” about that awkward moment when you bring up what’s wrong about the world over a meal with people who really aren’t having it. This track opens with the full poem, recited over an eerie clunking instrumental written by our producer, Jeremy Snyder. It’s like drifting on the lazy sewer river underneath our city (hence the title, which references a midpoint on the map that coincidentally falls beneath the capitol building and monuments). The back half is a conversation between Jael and her grandfather Manny, who passed away in 2023.
6. “Make Me Young”
This song was written by Guinevere Tully, our bassist, who sings lead vocals and wrote the song. From Guin: “I’d started hormone replacement therapy and was feeling very bad about myself. I knew it wasn’t ‘too late’ for me—because it’s not too late for anyone—but I tried to find a way to lament the things I thought I’d missed out on, while also recognizing the joys I had opened up for myself. ‘Make Me Young’ is partially a reference to Breakfast of Champions (Kilgore Trout pleading with Vonnegut to ‘make me young’), but also because HRT made me look younger lol.”
7. “Sticks and Stones”
Probably my personal favorite on the record because it’s actually just me talking shit about Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling. Sonically and lyrically it’s a triptych about discrimination via comedy. It’s titled after the first transphobic Chappelle Netflix special. The lyrics go from the victim to the perpetrator to the bystander. And in the end all the violence happens, because nothing’s funny anymore. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
8. “Buffaloed”
Go Bills.
9. “Devorah”
This is one of our favorites to play live. Opens with this elongated monkish drone Jeremy suggested because we were binging the new Lankum album and felt ambitious. The chorus is a reference to “missing and murdered Indigenous persons,” a term often used to describe the high rate of killed and kidnapped Native Americans. It’s a reference to how our country doesn’t give any legal consent to the use of these peoples’ lands, but it is willing to express some form of verbal contrition for those who have gone too early…and what that says about how it treats all of its historically disadvantaged communities.
10. “Burning Alive on K Street”
[Instrumental interlude]
11. “I90”
This is an autobiographical song about a drive I took in July 2022 to a music festival in Chicago. I didn’t realize I’d have to go through Ohio and Indiana until I was well on my way to the festival. Even forgetting Indiana, where it’s illegal for me to pee as a trans person…the state of Ohio has had unfortunate cases of trans folks being beaten to a pulp and then detained for using the right restroom. So I just filled up my tank, never parked, and leaned my seat back on that long stretch of straight I-90 watching the many religious billboards go by.
When I finally got home, my father suggested I write a song about that experience. We asked Josaleigh Pollett to be guest vocalist on the track because a) their voice is haunting and b) the band wanted the album to conclude with a bicoastal statement of solidarity, camaraderie and togetherness (Josaleigh is based in Salt Lake City). At the end, the final lines of that poem come back—referencing “gravestones of strangers”—and it becomes this fucked-up hands-across-America image where all queer people afraid for their lives can sing together and know they’re not alone.
