CONTENT NOTE: the following review contains discussion of death, grief, and loss.
I’m not sure what I thought I would find in Dot Homler’s obituary other than old wounds and exposed nerves. Sie left suddenly and unexpectedly, as too many of us do, spared the indignity of watching–as also happens with too many of us–a grieving family corral hir legacy into an easily digestible patchwork of he/hims and deadnames. For a moment, all I can think of is how narrowly I avoided a similar ending in early 2022, my mother who didn’t make it through that spring, the wounds that don’t fully heal but evolve as we continue the work of living.
It’s hard to believe it’s been close to two years since Thotcrime’s stunning D1G1T4L_DR1FT. For a girl just starting to poke a toe out of the closet, egg freshly cracked and heart heavy with grief, the raw, uncompromising energy on display hit me like a hormone shot to the thigh. It was a terrifying and uncertain time, and probably the perfect time to stumble across an all-trans band singing about leaps of faith and how to survive past your expiration date. Their follow-up, Connection Anxiety, finds the collective older, wiser, somehow navigating grief and finding ways to look over their shoulder while dashing forward at breakneck speed.
One of Thotcrime’s greatest strengths is pulling threads of optimism from the knotted tangle of seriously scary shit, and they lean hard into that tradition right out the gate with album opener “A Better World is Possible.” Vocalist Hayley Elizabeth doesn’t offer any easy answers, more of a prayer: “I want to believe / That our salvation / Doesn’t require / A sacrifice.” The kids from “We Are the World” are all grown up, asking why the hell our tax dollars are still barreling towards the human death and suffering we see unfolding in real time on our social media feeds.
Connection Anxiety is a much more collaborative effort than D1G1T4L_DR1FT, with Hayley Elizabeth sharing production duties with Les Beaux Plastiques. The late Dot Homler took the lead on drum programming throughout 2023, injecting undeniable amounts of energy into what would become hir final work with the band, pushing the rest of the group ahead of hir high-tempo blast beats at full speed. Guitarist Melody Jane opted to live-track her parts for the first time, adding a welcome organic layer to Thotcrime’s cybergrind mélange, and some legitimately juicy tones throughout–the opening to “We Hope Some Good May Come of This” and the bounce riffing on rap-metal banger “Existent” are just a couple of examples. Beau steps away from the producer’s chair to drop two verses on the latter track, and it’s awesome to see the band trying something new and selling it so damn well.
For all their experiments and mad scientist genre-mashing, Thotcrime has never strayed too far from their hardcore roots, and on Connection Anxiety they’ve given us plenty of hooks and singalong moments for the live shows to come. Early single “Behind the Cracks” starts off as a song about trying not to let the people around you catch on that you’re barely keeping it together, but as it coalesces around the central hook–“There’s nothing wrong with me / There’s nothing happening”–it’s hard not to picture Hayley Elizabeth lending the mic to a group of trans girls in the front row with a knowing smile. Later track “The Wrong Way” follows in the footsteps of straight-up pop anthems like “Tweet This!” from D1G1T4L_DR1FT, but where “Tweet This!” found Elizabeth angrily banging the padded walls of the social media panopticon, “The Wrong Way” is more at peace, with both eyes on the future. “No more faking this,” she declares in the chorus, “I’ll give it everything. / It’s not our last shot / It’s not our final stop / We’ll ride this wave until we reach the top.”
That forward gaze is everywhere on this album, even as the band grapples with their past and processes their grief. “This Podcast Could’ve Lasted Four Seasons” reads like the eulogy Dot Homler deserved, with Elizabeth screaming out one of her bandmate’s musical aliases on the outro: “Sacred Fawn / Living on in my heart.” The track Garden Court, featuring trans furry violinist bagel rabbit, reflects on Elizabeth’s decision to leave Philadelphia and join her bandmates in Chicago, ending with the refrain “I can keep moving forward / I don’t need to go back.” If D1G1T4L_DR1FT was about finding the strength to keep going, closing with a memorable one-two punch of “You can’t kill me / So tell me what’s next,” Connection Anxiety is about settling into the cracks of the promised “what’s next,” exploring the spaces between while keeping an eye toward the future.
This is, even more so than D1G1T4L_DR1FT, an album about survival. Music to listen to in the wake of grief and loss, songs for when you’re standing at a crossroads, when so much is still uncertain. Life is hard, being in community with other humans–while still feeling like ourselves–is hard, and these women understand that better than most. But albums like this one are a way to remind each other to keep trying anyway. Connection Anxiety, like its predecessor, has arrived at precisely the right time.
Connection Anxiety is available on major streaming services, as well as for purchase on Bandcamp. Thotcrime is also touring the US starting next weekend in support of the album–check here for upcoming dates.
