As she describes herself on her website, Elizabeth Nelson is a journalist, copywriter and songwriter. She's the frontwoman for the Paranoid Style, releasing a series of albums that have received little radio play but have been lauded by all the right critics. The band's most recent album, The Interrogator, is described by Nelson as "sounds something like Elvis Costello's mid-career masterpiece Blood & Chocolate as reimagined by Eliminator-era ZZ Top. Laced with malign landlords, nighttime debauchery, tedious group chats, banana splits and felony murder, no single album of 2024 will better capture the hectic, nervous, dislocating, end-of-Democracy-precipice that is our exhilarating brief. Glam rock for the end times."
A bit much? Sure, and probably more than a bit tongue-in-cheek. I'm not as jubilant about the record as other critics are, but "Are You Loathsome Tonight?" is my kind of bitter, sad and resigned.
