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Marie Davidson Working Class Woman Ninja Tune

05.10.18

Marie Davidson is a sucker for self-scrutiny on her fourth solo LP, Working Class Woman. As with 2016’s Adieux Au Dancefloor, Davidson evaluates the toxicity and vapidity of dance music culture. On opening track Your Biggest Fan, she assumes the guise of vacuous troll, doling out spoken text insults as bright trance synths flutter in the background, while Workaholic Paranoid Bitch explores the strains of being a musician. Here, Davidson brings her acerbic wit to a topic that has been thrust into the public consciousness in recent years.

At times, Davidson takes self-parody to extremes. So Right suggests a euphoric dancefloor celebration, but it’s rife with tongue-in-cheek affectations (“Sexual/ Conceptual/ Tell me are you/ Conceptual”). Elsewhere, the album’s title is a bold statement, but its political implications could be explored more within the context of the LP. Working Class Woman showcases the breadth of Davidson’s poetic imagination and analogue skillset. There’s an urgency to Davidson’s new sound that we haven’t quite heard before. Here’s hoping she goes even deeper next time.