- Punchy bass and drifting field recordings in Italian are the opening salvo of Working Class Woman (the new longplayer by Montreal’s Marie Davidson on iconic UK label Ninja Tune), before a tongue-in-cheek, accented English voice starts to play the part of annoying hanger-on-at-the-booth: "you're so strange...you remind me of...oh yeah I heard you at that thing...man, I think she's faking her accent...are you doing a DJ set tonight?!..is this album about taking risks..?" plus some unprintable whispered swearing in French. We're painting a picture of an artist who has clearly been on the receiving end of pretty much ALL of the different flavours of bullshit that an artist, especially a woman in electronica, can be bombarded with, particularly by those who claim the opening track's titular status, Your Biggest Fan.
Second cut Work It has already been getting a rinse from radio around the country, and has that similar insouciant half-sung vocal that was the signature of electro-clash, floating unapologetically over grinding synths and zappy drum-computer percussion parts that could easily have breakers spinning on their helmeted heads. "Work to be a winner" she intones. Best believe this one is coming to a b-girl battle near you! It's a spacious and distinctly retro-tinged aesthetic, sitting naturally alongside Kraftwerk or perhaps her Quebecois countryman Ghislain Poirier. It's all tom-drum rolls and rippling side-stick lines, busy rim-shot and hand-clap patterns with full sixteenth tambourine and snare rhythms dominating relatively simple pulsing bass parts and arpeggiated leads. A classic electro palette executed with sure-footedness and panache.
Mid-album cut Day Dreaming takes us out of the rigid synthetics of the introduction and into some very atmospheric territory. The FM-synth emerges from the swampy morass of the more analogue sounds we began with. Here again we find an accomplished (if somewhat nostalgic) take on classic electronica, with Davidson's wry cynical vocals bringing things firmly into the present. It's a heady combination. I imagine an early career techno-maker being pretty inspired by the depth of personal expression Davidson’s lyrics and delivery can affect, and coupled with her near-bullet-proof production chops, she creates something that transcends the often impersonal nature of electronica and yet the album is sonically uncompromising, satisfyingly chunky and brutal on cuts like Workaholic Paranoid Bitch and Lara.
Overall Working Class Woman is an electro masterclass by a woman with something to say. File next to Suzanne Ciani and know that even if she doesn’t maintain the rage, you’ll be wanting to pay attention to her sound for some time to come.
- Kieran Ruffles.