Trans Music Feels

Once upon a time I used Twitter, and a lot of my ideas that I never developed into articles or reviews ended up as a pithy line or two in the form of a tweet. (I mean, it’s not like I write a lot of essays, but there are a few here.) When Twitter fully descended into a hellscape, I moved to Mastodon. And while I post even less there, I was still sad when the first instance I signed up for announced it was shutting down this year. I’m now over at tech.lgbt, but my old toots will soon be gone forever. For the most part, I don’t care. But there was one series of toots I made that I want to collect and keep alive here.

I’ve shared songs with the tag #TransMusicFeels that gave me some sort of emotional reaction relating to my transness. Most of these songs are by cis people, as there aren’t many trans musicians in the mainstream of the genres I like best. I don’t usually like it when cis people write or sing about us intentionally, but sometimes they get it right, or get close. Regardless, these songs resonate with me and help me make sense of my trans experience. Some were probably not written with any sort of gender consideration in mind at all, but I’ll read whatever I want into these songs. That’s my right, and besides, I believe that cis people can experience most of the same feelings we do, or at least something similar. But it is a prerequisite to be on the list that I have to actually like the song beyond just feeling seen or connecting with something in the lyrics.

So anyway, here are the songs, in the rough order they occurred to me:

• “Wishes” by Beach House. I doubt it was the intention, but I hear it anyway. This was the first song that clicked for me this way and it still makes me emotional every time.
• “Reservations” by Wilco. Again, I doubt it was intended.
• “Changes” by David Bowie. Of course.
• “Lady Stardust” by David Bowie. There are countless Bowie songs that could be here, but this one hits me the hardest. It brings me back to when I felt more non-binary. The pronouns are confusing, but that might just make it more delightful.
• “Transformer Man” by Neil Young, from the bizarre/prescient Trans (1982) album. I mean, the vocoder!
• “No G.D.M.” by Gina X. My sister ripped this song from vinyl and presciently put it on a mix CD that she gave me when I was about 18.
• “Born a Girl” by Manic Street Preachers.
• “Lose This Skin” by The Clash, written and sung by Tymon Dogg. A bit complicated but I can read it that way.
• “I Want to Break Free” by Queen.
• “Losing My Religion” by REM. I understand it to be about coming out and struggling to explain one’s sexual identity, but it applies just as well to gender identity. I prefer the IRS albums but it amuses me how popular this song is and that it seems to be widely misunderstood to be a statement about religion, which as far as I can tell, it is not.
• “It’s a Sin” by Pet Shop Boys. An absolute banger if there ever was one. I will never forget hearing this blasting down the hall while recovering from surgery on a hospital floor inhabited solely by trans people.
• “For Today I Am a Boy” by Anohni and the Johnsons.
• “Boys” by Bauhaus. I remember hearing this when I was 15 and feeling uncomfortably seen. Quite a statement for the b-side of their much more famous debut single!
• “Candy Says” by The Velvet Underground always hits me hard, even if I’m past the point now of making all the big decisions that cause endless revisions.
• “A Night Like This” by The Cure has been beloved to me ever since I first encountered it via The Smashing Pumpkins’ cover. I can relate to the mess of confusing and conflicting emotions in Robert Smith’s lyrics. The line “The way that you look at me now / Makes me wish I was you” certainly foreshadows “Why Can’t I Be You?”, which frankly is also super transy. I can read lots of Cure songs through a trans lens.
• “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. A lot of NIN songs hit me in powerful, confusing ways as a teenager. I obviously connected with Trent’s depression and frustrations with capitalism, but the sexual angst was harder to explain. Now it makes more sense.
• “I Want Your Love” by Chromatics. The one guest contribution I got. (Thanks Mirah!)
• “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” by Kate Bush. I’m surprised I never mentioned before! I’ve loved it ever since I heard Placebo’s cover. (Chromatics also did a version.)

I’m definitely open to more suggestsions (here or on Mastodon), and I’ll keep posting them as I encounter them!

1000 Airplanes on the Roof - 2025.11.07 Neuköllner Oper, Berlin, Germany

Earlier this year, a friend took me to my first-ever opera (Richard Strauss’ Elektra at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden) and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. When another friend suggested a trans-centric performance of a Philip Glass theatric composition at the Neuköllner Oper, my curiosity was piqued enough to take the chance. I’m glad I did.

[Sarah Bodle and Mara Snip on stage. (Press photo.)]

There’s a review in the taz that covers the details pretty well and I won’t repeat that here. What I don’t think they covered is how the performance comes across to a trans viewer. Director Paige Eakin Young and co-director/lead performer Mara Snip took this science-fiction work about alien or supernatural abduction and deftly reinterpreted it through a trans lens. As far as I can tell, the original text from David Henry Hwang already explicitly dealt with themes of personal confusion around one’s own inexplicable experiences and the societal disbelief and refusal of acknowledgement that accompany it. As the lead performer says more than once, “It is better to forget, it is pointless to remember. No one will believe you.” While the authors drew on popular accounts of UFO encounters, they also connected it to spiritual and drug-induced experiences as well as psychosis. In all of these situations, the subject becomes even more isolated as they realize that others will not take them seriously.

All of this will be instantly familiar to any trans person. I literally thought I was a space alien as I child; I didn’t know how else to make sense of how I felt. While I’m grateful not to have lost any relationships as a result of coming out, I still worry about how extended family members or friends I haven’t seen in years will react to my changes. I still get anxious that some fresh hell will be unleashed upon me every time I go to a new healthcare professional, or visit a government office, or cross a border. I live with it better than I did a few years ago when I last wrote at length about being trans in public, but everything I wrote there is still accurate, and the politics of both my home country and my country of residence leave me in a constant low-grade panic about my safety.

One of the lessons I’ve learned over the years is that it’s easier if I don’t talk about being trans with cis people I’m not especially close to. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that they don’t understand what I’m talking about, and it tends to make them uncomfortable. The conversation is a dead end. They can’t offer me much wisdom, nor can they respond with their own similar experiences. I mean, they probably could, but they’re too scared that any comparison might offend me. (It wouldn’t!) Of course, I’m talking here about the generally sympathetic people that I would even want to share anything about myself with, not the people that actively want me repressed, outcast, or dead!

So when Snip tells me about her childhood experiences of expressing nascent femininity and learning quickly that that would elicit swift, harsh judgment, I know that feeling. When she describes looking in a window and seeing her girlhood reflected, I’ve done the same. When her mom sent her a picture taken by her grandfather of her as a child in a gown and hair extensions, I remembered a picture a friend in college took and developed of me in my first skirt with my hair finally grown out. When Snip recounted wondering how a lover would react to her trans body, I can relate. When she stopped mid-sentence to ask if someone in the crowd said something, I know that anxiety. When she expressed disbelief that anyone would ever take her seriously as a performer, let alone as a human, well, I’ve been there too.

Snip invested a lot of herself in this performance, and it paid off. I can presumably say the same of Paige. If you’re looking for a dramatic representation of what trans life is like, it’s hard to imagine doing better than this. And on top of that, you get an excellent, otherworldly musical performance featuring some sort of wind synth instrument in addition to Roland keyboard synths and a variety of other woodwinds. Snip was excellent in the role, and I would be remiss not to mention Sarah Bodle’s sublime performance as some blend of alien, spirit, and sexual liberator. I really wonder what the cis people in the crowd thought; I worry that they got an entirely different, confusing, less emotionally moving performance. But maybe for once, this wasn't for them.

Score: A

 

Thanks to Mirah! 

The Chameleons / White Rose Transmission - Live 2025.10.31 Lido, Berlin, Germany

The Chameleons have been back for a few years now. And by “The Chameleons”, I mean singer/bassist Mark Burgess (who strangely is going just by “Vox” lately) and guitarist Reg Smithies. Drummer John Lever died in 2017 and guitarist Dave Fielding has been apparently uninterested in rejoining. ChameleonsVox, which initially included Lever in addition to Burgess, seems to have fluidly become the “real” thing just by getting Reg back in the fold.

I saw ChameleonsVox twice in Berlin before the pandemic in 2017 and 2019 and enjoyed both shows. The Chameleons have played here twice in the last two years, but I missed both. I was excited for this show, all the more so when I saw that White Rose Transmission would be opening. That band was originally a collaboration between Carlo van Putten of The Convent and Adrian Borland of The Sound, another magnificent oft-overlooked 80s band. Burgess had produced the first two Convent albums and performed on a couple WRT albums, so I was kinda hoping I might see something special. Alas, there were no guest appearances. It was just van Putton on lead vocals and Thomas Marcin on acoustic guitar and occasional backing vocals. They mostly performed songs written by Borland. Marcin’s style was dynamic and emotive, and with van Putton’s full voice, they had a sort of acoustic gothic vibe. I loved the EQ on the guitar. The bottom end sounded heavy and haunting. They made a lot out of their minimal arrangements.

[White Rose Transmission.]

The Chameleons did not take long to hit the stage. They opened with the lead single of their new album Arctic Moon, “Where Are You?”, the best song they’ve put out since reforming. Their poetic politics are just as alive as ever. And while several of the songs in their set relate more to affairs of the heart, their socio-political side stood out the most. It’s amazing how brilliant songs like “Soul in Isolation” and “Swamp Thing” are still as relevant now as when they were written, and they rock. They ultimately played five of the seven songs from the new album, wisely skipping two of the more meandering tracks. “David Bowie Takes My Hand” wasn’t my favorite of the bunch, but Burgess said it was the Chameleons song that saved his life (providing no further explanation, other than that it helped him understand when fans tell him that this or that song saved theirs), which is certainly a way to hype a piece of art.

The setlist was a dream, including many of my favorites, even including “Paradiso”, which I’d specifically lamented not seeing when ChameleonsVox did their Strange Times (1986) set in 2019. In fact, it seemed like we got an especially long set, certainly longer than the shows I’d seen before and I think even longer than most other shows on the current tour so far. I’d wondered why they started so early, and it turns out it was probably that they wanted to play for nearly two hours before the local 10pm noise restrictions would go into effect. As is typical, several songs at the end of the show were extended considerably and included a number of teases of other classic rock songs.

[The Chameleons.]

It was great to see Reg playing these songs, and he was in good form. Truth be told, I preferred Dave’s parts, as they tend to be the more astral, sparkling, transcendent ones, but I always liked how they traded parts, and that dual-guitar interplay still defines the new songs. Stephen Rice played Dave’s parts note-for-note and proved himself just as skilled on guitar as he was on drums when I saw him at the 2019 show. Todd Demma’s drumming was great, and while Danny Ashberry mostly hid in the back to play relatively simple keyboard parts, he played acoustic guitar on the first half of “Feels Like the End of the World” (while a superfluous backing track played the string parts) and took Mark’s bass for the second half of “Second Skin” and all of “Don’t Fall”. Mark himself played the acoustic on “David Bowie Takes My Hand” while Ashberry played the bass part on his keyboard. While everyone played well and the show generally sounded great, the bass was oddly low in the mix. As a result, several times when I expected the beat to drop or the energy to kick up a notch, it didn’t really happen.

The Chameleons also released two EPs last year, although neither was especially notable. Of the songs that didn’t also appear on the album, they only played “The Fan and the Bellows”, which isn’t a new song. Tomorrow Remember Yesterday is five rerecordings of some of their earliest songs with slight updates, better production, and reduced tempos, but none are actual improvements over the originals. Where Are You? consists of another redone oldie, an early, alternate but similar version of the title track, and one other unremarkable, low-key new song.

It’s great to have them back at any rate, even if the difference between ChameleonsVox and The Chameleons seems to just be Reg. The new album is pretty good; it starts and ends strongly with their typical shimmering guitars and incisive lyrics, although too many of the songs go on way too long. I’m still happy to have it, and I’m happy that the band still feels alive and relevant. The crowd still skewed older, but there were plenty of people even younger than me. Mark appeared genuinely happy to still be doing it and grateful that we were still coming. If they continue to perform with this level of energy and their genre-defining sound, it won’t be hard to keep drawing a crowd.

Here’s the setlist:
01. Where Are You?
02. The Fan and the Bellows
03. Pleasure and Pain
04. Lady Strange
05. Perfume Garden
06. Looking Inwardly
07. Paradiso
08. In Answer
09. David Bowie Takes My Hand
10. Saviours Are a Dangerous Thing
11. Soul in Isolation [including teases of Buffalo Springfield‘s “For What It’s Worth”, The Doors’ “The End”, David Bowie‘s “Be My Wife”, The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby”, and The Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”]
12. Swamp Thing [including a tease of The Beatles’ “Rain”]
13. Feels Like the End of the World

Encore:
14. Indiana
15. Monkeyland
16. Second Skin [including teases of The Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and Bowie’s “Be My Wife” (again)]
17. Don’t Fall [including teases of The Doors’ “Light My Fire”, Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel”, and something else I didn’t catch]

Scores:
White Rose Transmission: B
The Chameleons: A-
Arctic Moon: B-
Where Are You? EP: C+
Tomorrow Remember Yesterday EP: C

Nala Sinephro - Live 2025.10.28 Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany

Nala Sinephro put out one of my favorite albums last year, and considering how rarely I see live jazz, this show was an immediate priority for me. On top of that, she played in the Kammermusiksaal of the Philharmonie, a well-designed, modern venue with nice seats.

[Pictures were not allowed during the performance, so here’s the harp tuner.]

Despite my enthusiasm, I had no idea what to expect. After some delays, Sinephro and three bandmates came out. She went straight to her harp and played solo at length. I was already captivated; she played flawlessly and beautifully. Eventually she looked up and nodded to Lyle Barton (operating a synth bass rig) and a drummer who’s name I didn’t catch. I think it was Moses Boyd but might’ve been either of the drummers who played on the album (Natcyet Wakili or Morgan Simpson) or someone else entirely. They started playing simple parts at a low level and I could feel the energy slowly building. Eventually Nubya Garcia started some slow blows on her sax, more breathy air than harmony, and around the same time Sinephro pushed away the harp, got up, and sat down at her synth rig (a Prophet ’08 with a modular bay on the side). And from there, things really picked up.

They improvised in total for around 45 minutes without a break. It was transcendent. Sinephro stayed at the synth for the rest of the jam, modulating an arpeggiator just about the entire time. She was a deft manipulator of the knobs and kept introducing subtle shifts in tempo, tone, pitch, and effects, guiding us gently but firmly on an expansive journey. The drummer underpinned the rises and falls of the mood, heavily resting on beds of cymbals with shocks of snare for intermittent energetic bursts. Garcia’s sax started as merely texture, but she gradually warmed up to greater and more aggressive attacks as well. She also used effects pedals to wash her instrument’s rough edges out and grant it shimmering trails. Barton’s synth mostly faded into the background, merely underpinning the others’ more expressive performances. But near the end, as Sinephro cut back some of her layers and signaled to Garcia and the drummer to fade out, Barton’s synth stepped up and took a leading role, wildly oscillating in higher registers. I recognized the tone and style from several of the songs on Endlessness. And then, ever so slowly, they too faded out.

After just a brief pause for applause, they started over, again with Sinephro alone at the harp. In fact, they followed almost the exact same pattern. The order of the instrumentation was about the same, as was the general arc of the energy levels. They again improvised for around 45 minutes. The second jam was just as good as the first, only losing some marks due to the familiarity of the format. And after that, Sinephro said thanks, and they left.

I loved the juxtaposition of the serene harp with the wilder, freer synth exploration. I thought I recognized a few motifs from the album, but the structure was much looser and more open than those individual songs. I was amused to see Sinephro occasionally give direction to her bandmates, to which the drummer typically responded rather abruptly. I would’ve expected a more gradual transition, but it wasn’t exactly jarring. There were just a few moments where Sinephro’s synth had some rough transitions where the effects misaligned and caused a brief dropout or a nasty noise, but those were infrequent and quickly recovered from. Otherwise, they performed at an impressively high level.

Score: A

Thanks to Alyssa!

Soltero @ Schokoladen on Sept 9

 

We just back from playing at a festival in France and we're getting right back to it in Berlin. Come see us play with Balm at Schokoladen on September 9 at 8pm!

Patti Smith - Live 2025.07.11 Zitadelle Spandau, Berlin, Germany

I’ve seen Patti Smith twice before, both times at the same venue as this time. While the first was a bit tame, I was rewarded for giving her a second shot, as the second show in 2022 was superb. I wasn’t gonna resist another chance to see this aging star, even if she was touring with just one guitarist.

But strangely enough, when the announced quartet appeared on stage, a fifth member was present on keyboards! It turned out to be Oisin Murray, mostly known as a live audio technician. He also played a bit of bass and guitar on a couple songs at the start and end of the show. For the rest, it really was a quartet. However, her longest-serving bandmates Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty were absent without explanation. Her other regular collaborators, Tony Shanahan (bass, keyboards, and backing vocals) and her son Jackson Smith (guitar), were still in tow. New to the fold was drummer Sebastian Rochford.

They opened with “Redondo Beach”, which certainly would’ve suffered if Shanahan had had to pick between bass or keyboards; the song is built on the interplay of both. That was followed by a cover of Steve Earle’s “Transcendental Blues”, which is new to this tour. I didn’t know the song before, but I thoroughly enjoyed their take on it. It was droning yet still had motion, and Jackson’s open tuning served it well. Murray left the stage after that while the rest did a run of Patti’s standard favorites. I particularly enjoyed “Spell”. Last time I saw her, she read the footnote to Howl, but this was a full-band rendition. They built it up to a really high energy (and volume) level, far beyond the original studio version, similar to the live take on Land (2002). She ad-libbed some extra holy places, including Palestine and Gaza (and Berlin). The crowd seemed into it. They also cheered for the extra line declaring immigrants as holy. This might be basic-level rock star activism, but I’d rather have it than not.

“Nine” isn’t my favorite of hers, but she also built that into a much longer and more dynamic piece than originally recorded. And then she said she wanted to try something new but wasn’t quite sure she had it. Finally she sang the opening words: “The world is a vampire sent to drain”. What!? She forgot how it continued and had to check a lyric sheet, but sure enough, they played a weirdly classic-rock rendition of The Smashing Pumpkins’s “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”! It was a strange arrangement with a different melody and lacking most of the aggression and dynamics of the original. It’s not exactly my favorite SP song, but I mean, it was still pretty cool. And this was the debut of her take on it! 17-year-old me might’ve fainted.

The rest of the set was pretty similar to her usual setlists, albeit with the Charlotte Day Wilson cover “Work” (new to this tour) and a reading of “Cry Humanity”. The rest are all good songs, so I can’t complain, but it was a bit predictable. Patti forgot how to do the guitar rhythm at the start of “Beneath the Southern Cross”, but once she got going and the band joined in, it made for another powerful song as it peaked. The “Within You Without You” interpolation by Jackson and Tony was once again really cool. It rained off an on through the night, and I wondered if they played “Pissing in a River” as a bit of a joke in reference to that, but they have been playing it regularly on the tour. Murray came back out for that one and stayed through the end. “Because the Night” and “People Have the Power” predictably got the largest audience response, but I was sad to leave without “Gloria”. She hasn’t been doing it on this tour for some reason. That’s probably the one song I wanna hear every time. Oh well.

Despite the different membership, this show wasn’t particularly different than the past shows I’ve seen. I felt like the performance was a bit tame and Patti wasn’t at the top of her game, but it was still fun. The band was tight regardless, albeit a bit thin when it was just four people. The tempos felt a bit slow and I wish they’d rock out more, but when they did, it was great. I’m glad she still gets political with and between her songs, and I still find her pretty inspiring. I like that she always tries to see the best in people while speaking plainly and directly of injustice. She brings a great energy, even if she is getting old and maybe not quite as sharp as she used to be.

Here’s the setlist:
01. Redondo Beach
02. Transcendental Blues [Steve Earle cover]
03. Ghost Dance
04. 1959
05. Cash
06. Spell [Allen Ginsberg adaptation]
07. Nine
08. Bullet with Butterfly Wings [The Smashing Pumpkins cover]
09. Dancing Barefoot
10. Beneath the Southern Cross / Within You Without You [The Beatles cover tease]
11. Work [Charlotte Day Wilson cover]
12. Cry Humanity [poem]
13. Peaceable Kingdom → People Have the Power [partial]
14. Pissing in a River
15. Because the Night

Encore:
16. People Have the Power

Score: B

P.S. There is a bootleg of this concert, although not of the highest quality. The Hamburg show from two nights prior was also bootlegged, and it’s not only higher quality, but Patti also performed a little better.

P.P.S. Thanks to Mirah!

St. Vincent / Cult of Venus - Live 2025.07.05 Tempodrom, Berlin, Germany

I’ve seen St. Vincent twice. First was at ACL in 2014 on the tour for her self-titled album with a full band, and then in Berlin in 2017 on the Masseduction tour, where she appeared solo. Her only other scheduled show in the meantime in Berlin in 2021 was canceled, so that’s been it. I was a big fan of her latest album, All Born Screaming from last year, so I was looking forward to this show.

Cult of Venus appeared first, alone on stage with just a guitar, a keyboard, and a powerful smoke machine. The highlight was her strong voice. She also produced quite a bit of sound, but I wondered if all the layers were being controlled by her via her synth setup or if it was handled offstage. Regardless, the sum total was very clean and produced, which limited her opportunities to engage and explore. Her songs were fairly short and so was her set. The beats were good and the music was fine, but there was no life to it. It felt too staged and manufactured. Her aesthetic definitely fit the St. Vincent mold, and it felt like Venus had drawn quite a bit from St. Vincent’s solo setup.

But when St. Vincent came out, I was relieved that she was touring with a full band. I wasn’t a fan of the highly programmed solo show in 2017 and much preferred the rawer band performance from 2014. This time she had an even larger band, very much in the rock mode. Notably, the band included guitarist Jason Falkner and drummer Mark Guiliana. Falkner is perhaps best known for playing with Beck and Air; I saw him on stage with Beck on that same day I saw St. Vincent in 2014. Guiliana has a long resume in the jazz world but got a lot of attention for playing on Bowie’s Blackstar (2016). The others were Rachel Eckroth on synth and vocals and Robert Ellis on bass and keyboards. All together, they were a formidable team, and it’s cool that St. Vincent can get some big names to back her up.

[St. Vincent.]

The setlist was great. She played a bunch of songs from the new(-ish) album and a wide selection from across her back catalog. I would’ve gladly taken more from her self-titled album, but even the songs from Masseduction, which wasn’t my favorite when it came out, turned out great on stage and had all the energy I missed when she tried them solo. The sound could’ve been better (the vocals were hard to hear and the bass was muddy) but it still came over really well. I loved the guitar interplay and was happy to have that back. St. Vincent also used a Soma Pipe and a Stylophone Theremin for some extra little effects. And of course she handed her guitar into the crowd during “Cheerleader” and then stage dove during “New York” while continuing to sing as if it were no big deal. During the latter, another woman came out to play Ellis’ synth. She had been bringing St. Vincent her guitars, and she looked a bit like Cult of Venus, which made me wonder if it was the same person.

[At the fence. Note the extra synth player.]

I hadn’t peeked at setlists in advance, but I was hoping she’d play “Candy Darling”. The definitive song about the actress is of course “Candy Says” by The Velvet Underground, but nonetheless, I appreciated St. Vincent’s homage to the trans icon. Sure enough, she played it as the encore, but she played it rather loose and coy. She interrupted it and talked through it in a way that made it feel insincere. I was happy to have any version of it, but I would’ve preferred a straighter (lol) performance or a different arrangement. And then she left. I was hoping for just one or two more bangers to end on a high note, but instead it was just this formless rendition of a short, slow, sentimental song. It wasn’t the best way to end a show. I think I’m picky about this sort of thing. Regardless, the rest of the show was a delight, so I can forgive it!

[Singing while crowdsurfing.]

Here’s the setlist:
01. Reckless
02. Fear the Future
03. Los Ageless
04. Broken Man
05. I Wanna Be Your Dog [Stooges cover tease] → Birth in Reverse
06. Dilettante
07. Pay Your Way in Pain
08. Flea
09. Cheerleader
10. Big Time Nothing
11. Marrow
12. Violent Times
13. New York
14. Sugarboy (with “Los Ageless” lyric tease)
15. All Born Screaming

Encore:
16. Candy Darling

Scores:
Cult of Venus: B-
St. Vincent: A-

Thanks to Keagan!