- 1Can't Sing (ft. Dennis Young)
- 2Throw It in the Lake (ft. Jeff Tobias)
- 3Bad Design (ft. Slic)
- 4Find Me!
- 5Timebomb (ft. Dennis Young)
- 6Keepaway (ft. Jeff from Mars)
- 7Woman of Intention (ft. Kate Mohanty, Jeff Tobias)
- 8Places Like This (ft. Matt Warwick)
- 9Metamorphoses (ft. Altimetry)
- 10Haircut
- 11What the Weather Wanted (ft. Tyler McCauley)
WBF-045
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Open edition
Abbie from Mars is really from Mars. That is, Mars, Pennsylvania, where she grew up on a flower farm, far from the cultural relevance of New York City—though New York attracts dreamers, eccentrics, and, yes, Martians. After landing there in late 2020, the electroacoustic tap dancer, lifelong straight-edger, and WFMU radio DJ brought her playful and intense live shows into the city’s venues and DIY spaces. Her forthcoming album is an impassioned and earnest experimental pop document that expresses the most realized version of the Abbie from Mars creative universe to date.
Album title You Always Wanted to Be a Part of What Went on in Places Like This is borrowed from a song by ‘80s art punks Tuxedomoon and points to inspiration from a grittier New York, while acknowledging the artist’s own smallness as a transplant from a flyover town. “It feels so good to… take part in the waste around me,” she snarls on “Places Like This,” embracing the persistent New York messiness that both thrills and disappoints. The cover portrait, shot by No Wave photographer Julia Gorton, is a cheeky but sincere billet-doux to AfM’s artistic forebears of the city, whose raw, daring, inventive skronk is channeled in no-rules songwriting and rousing delivery.
The album is referential and reverential while forging its own bold course. “To every rule, I am always the exception,” she sneers on “Woman of Intention.” The eclectic tastes of AfM and co-producer Dale Eisinger result in confrontational yet decisively hooky, pop-leaning combinations that only two music obsessives with an ear for danger could devise. The record is a syncretic blend of post-punk of the early 1980s, arty pop of the aughts, and contemporary, Auto-Tuned production styles. Contributors include Liquid Liquid’s Dennis Young, Animal Collective and Chicago footwork collaborator Rusty Santos, NYC sax monsters Jeff Tobias and Kate Mohanty, and avant-pop genius Slic.
What brings one to New York? This album has some ideas. It is a record of dreams and delusions, with the crazed highs and yearning disillusionment that attend them. Yet, while unfolding, these songs find plenty of space to play. On “Haircut,” the album’s penultimate Suicide-infused punk jam: “I don’t know, I just really need to dance!”
Album title You Always Wanted to Be a Part of What Went on in Places Like This is borrowed from a song by ‘80s art punks Tuxedomoon and points to inspiration from a grittier New York, while acknowledging the artist’s own smallness as a transplant from a flyover town. “It feels so good to… take part in the waste around me,” she snarls on “Places Like This,” embracing the persistent New York messiness that both thrills and disappoints. The cover portrait, shot by No Wave photographer Julia Gorton, is a cheeky but sincere billet-doux to AfM’s artistic forebears of the city, whose raw, daring, inventive skronk is channeled in no-rules songwriting and rousing delivery.
The album is referential and reverential while forging its own bold course. “To every rule, I am always the exception,” she sneers on “Woman of Intention.” The eclectic tastes of AfM and co-producer Dale Eisinger result in confrontational yet decisively hooky, pop-leaning combinations that only two music obsessives with an ear for danger could devise. The record is a syncretic blend of post-punk of the early 1980s, arty pop of the aughts, and contemporary, Auto-Tuned production styles. Contributors include Liquid Liquid’s Dennis Young, Animal Collective and Chicago footwork collaborator Rusty Santos, NYC sax monsters Jeff Tobias and Kate Mohanty, and avant-pop genius Slic.
What brings one to New York? This album has some ideas. It is a record of dreams and delusions, with the crazed highs and yearning disillusionment that attend them. Yet, while unfolding, these songs find plenty of space to play. On “Haircut,” the album’s penultimate Suicide-infused punk jam: “I don’t know, I just really need to dance!”
