There are those rare records out there that resonate in the mind and body in a way that goes beyond familiar, well-worn boundaries and categories of consciousness as in beyond happy vs. sad, good vs. evil, sensual vs. ascetic, fearful vs. reassuring and we’d like to submit OXA’s COMING FOR GOD as one of them…
…which may sound a bit grandiose on our part but don’t get it twisted cuz this ain’t some unwieldy 80-minute overstuffed emblem of rock music excess whether for better and/or worse like Tales of Topographic Oceans or Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water with the EP instead being a rather intimate affair which achieves maximum effect from minimal means in the highly economical space of 18 minutes as created by a four-piece collective comprised of Kendra Walkuski (guitar and vocals), Vincent Blackshadow (bass and production), Bryn Turney (viola), and Grant Meyer (drums) resulting in an EP of five austere, minimalist tone poems nonetheless chock full of theatrical twists, fantastical vocalizations, and intricate musicianship…
…which ay there’s the rub and the tug of the record’s darkly glistening twilight quality like being caught in a liminal space between wakefulness and sleep as in “to die, to sleep / to sleep, perchance to dream” which fits perfectly with the thematics of the LP as described by Kendra herself (see below)…
…with another way of viewing the EP’s running time being 6 + 6 + 6 minutes (get it?) given that it’s all about devils and other deities that locked in mortal combat but who share patriarchal hubris and vanity in common, with OXA’s four band members likewise locked in intense musical dialogue throughout with starkly intertwined lines at times moving in something resembling harmony but at others in roiling, tension-filled counterpoint, in an ornate “pas de deux times two” and no wonder then the band’s logo is comprised of the letters O-X-A superimposed over one another resulting in an abstract, archaic-looking symbol…
…and if you wanna hear what the heck we’re talking about just check out “Burgeon of Sanity” for starters (in case you haven’t taken an SAT test lately “Burgeon” is a term referring to a bud or young shoot in the botanical sense) a song that opens with an unadorned cyclical chordal figure accented by slithering trills on Bryn’s viola (soon echoed in the vocals) with Grant pounding out a motorik tom-tom beat as Kendra poses the following question: “Why do I always have to / prove that I am sane?” which is a common complaint of womenfolk in general and for good reason…
…at which point Vincent responds with a sinuous, unsettled baseline which only amplifies the intro’s inquisitive tone with the song’s next line further elaborating, “I used to think that if I got on my knees and prayed / I would be saved” with the use of “used to” likely stemming from the fact that representatives of religious organizations have long been at the forefront of questioning women’s sanity tho’ not all of ‘em of course and here we should add a disclaimer that this lyrical exegesis is merely our own hot take but hey that’s what you came here for…
…with Kendra’s guitar soon shifting into a more folksy, almost countryish finger-picked guitar figure bur with the family-first traditionalism oft associated with such music being subverted lyrically as the narrator expounds upon the willful ignorance of her mother (“she let her thoughts rot”) and the insidious nature of her father’s culturally conservative orthodoxy (“now he’s stuck / in the glue / of a world / we should never go back to”) and again ditto the disclaimer with all this taking place in the first minute or so of a nearly five-minute song…
…and while we’re not even gonna try and unpack the entire song suffice to say “Burgeon of Sanity” is quite the musical journey (just like the rest of the EP) which also includes a tango-like rhythmically syncopated section with some crazy (not literally!) vocal melismatics and bass runs and then there’s the straight-up waltz section with dynamics that likewise ebb and flow leading up to a big build-up but ending with a stark a cappella coda with OXA’s songs in general being just as much poetical as musical journeys which in this instance even interpolates the well-known Christian bedtime prayer “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” concluding with the lines “and if I die / before I wake / I know my mind / will not take / from any vain / God or hell”)…
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…with all of this getting at why COMING FOR GOD is likely to make you feel a certain kind of way but a certain kind of way that’s difficult to precisely delineate as Kendra & Co. take familiar musical tropes and twist them into knots not to mention Kendra’s otherworldly singing style which rests somewhere in the middle of an imaginary Venn diagram between Kate Bush’s elastic ululations and Appalachian style yodeling and the open-throated singing of medieval Bulgarian women’s choirs and the piercing, trilling tones and ear-catching intervals of ancient Swedish herding calls and in case you think we’re just b*ll-shitting and/or busting your b*lls (full confession: we just wanted to use some profanity and asterisks!) regarding the latter let it be known that Kendra herself references Kulning as an influence in the EP’s press pack notes…
…meaning that some may hear COMING FOR GOD as a series of soothing gothic lullabies or eerily seductive Morphine-style avant-indie bass-led chamber music while other may hear these five tracks as unsettling deconstructive folk-horror hymns sung in Sprechgesang and heck who knows what you’ll make it of yourself I guess you’ll just have to listen with even the title phrase “coming for god” lamentable to multiple reading whether in an euphoric, gospel-tinged sense of “coming with joy to meet my Lord!” or as in “you’ve pissed me off, dear God, so cash me outside or else I’m coming for you” or it could have something to do with something wholly more lascivious and holy “brought to heaven by lust”…
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…with OXA’s lyrics likewise confronting everything from environmental degradation on the album’s opening title track (“then the drought came ever-peeling / and made her earth into hay / oh how long did the river once run / how tall did the trees once grow?”) to a postmortem fever-dream similar to the last movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique…
…with the narrator confronting multiple selves and time folding in on itself after having committed suicide (“now she’s here with a gun / the last thing she will ever know”) so maybe best we kick it over to OXA themselves to provide further explanation with Kendra being kind enough to send some ancillary notes to the record which turns out to be a “concept EP” that follows a defined narrative but one with enough space and ambiguity for anyone to interpret it in their own way…
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A contemplation of divinity, the Devil, and self-discovery, our debut album Coming For God is a story of the pursuit of salvation by a young woman questioning the command of the omnipresent god she was raised to know as true. Struggling under the rigidity of religion, she takes her own life, only to find herself lost in a hellish dreamscape, seduced into holding the devil’s hand. In a continuous, surreal sequence, she encounters her past and present selves, witnesses the cyclical expanse of time, dons the mask of a new face, and ultimately discovers and reclaims her own authority within the sublimity of existence. The final song could be interpreted as either the devil’s lingering voice, still tempting her even after she’s gained self-awareness, or as her definitive break from a relationship with the concept of God.
And finally some further background notes on OXA itself as an entity for you to check out before or during or after you ride off into the transcendent realms of their music:
OXA–is the preface for anything that contains oxygen, or at length, anything composed of the essential element for life as we know it to succeed. With every inhalation of song, I’m reminded that music making is as ingrained in our survival as these atomic connections that bind existence together.
OXA is a Brooklyn-based band with a bohemian folk-rock sound. With equal parts beauty and angst, OXA’s sound is reminiscent of a religious baptism gone eerie, showering the audience with alluring vibrations and devilish tones. With professional training in theater and voice, OXA’s composer and vocalist Kendra Walkuski infuses her singer-songwriter style with an opera-rock twist. Allowing the audience to reminisce of the transcendence brought by Scandinavian kulning and artists such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. Add in the demonic pulse of the baseline, bleeding chords of the guitar, tribal sounds of the drums and the eerie yet touching cries of the viola, and you have OXA.
