Bay area multi-genre collective COMMANDO continue their string of singles with the new song “Four”. Keeping with the trend, the act provides a very detailed description of the song’s origins, inspirations, and more:
FOUR takes the textures of a meandering, dirgelike monologue about overlapping contexts of bisexuality and ethical nonmonagamy and melds them with a metaphoric middle-fingering toward negative stereotypes, stigma and respectability politics that have long been parroted by members of straight and monosexually gay/lesbian communities.
Juba met co-lyricist Judge Dutchboy in mid 1999 at a San Francisco dinner party hosted by bisexual magazine Anything That Moves, and joined his groundbreaking “homohop” group Rainbow Flava later that year.
The antagonisms they regularly faced in the ostensible LGBT community as out, bisexual non-monogamous men encouraged a collaboration that pointedly discussed concepts covered in the 1997 book The Ethical Slut.
The lyrical refrains both invert and subvert references as seemingly disparate as Ultramagnetic MCs, the 1957 Milwaukee Braves, Freddie Mercury and The Walking Dead. Delivered with sharp pivots from softness to ferocity borne of both stage experience and everyday living. If you don’t know, now you know.
“Four” is out now via Kill Rock Stars and, if the fact that previous singles “Diet Soda” and “Emet (Izdis Hymn?)” are also lumped in with it on Spotify lends me to think we should be expecting a new EP or LP soon? Visit COMMANDO on their Bandcamp or Spotify for the single, or to hear more.
the white drew carey (aka – Jeff Sorley) is the founder and head editor of TGEFM. He’s lived (outside of) Chicago, Madison WI, (ugh) Penn State, Lyon FR, Oxford UK, central New Jersey, and now within earshot of SFO in the Bay Area. When not scouring the web for more great bands and labels to post about, he also spends time drawing (mostly) silly sci-fi and anime stuff under the name Asplenia Studios.
