Ace of Wands is a Toronto-based trio centered on the songwriting of Lee Rose who is accompanied by Anna Mernieks (Beams) and Jody Brumell (SHANKS). The band released their debut album, Lioness, in 2019, and followed it with Feminine Values, a very strong new single and first example from their coming sophomore full length.
Lyrically acute and instrumentally razor-sharp, the new song is a guitar pop exemplar which doesn't only stand like Ace of Wands' finest effort thus far, but also flaunts a direction toward a darker style that seems very befitting to the band's sound, the ardor in Rose's writing and the ferocity of their performance, while it also becomes a hard slap on the face of patriarchy, very much shrewdly so.
"Belong to no-one but myself," Lee Rose comes across unapologetic in her artist statement. "Is it easier for me to endure the pain of female repression and remain quiet, or challenge the status quo? Is it easier to acquiesce to a phallocentric definition of womanhood, or face the pain of discovering my own?
"I resist. I resist the constraints of the male gaze. I resist the objectification of female bodies. I celebrate and honour what is true for me in each and every way those truths appear - in rage, in grief, in sadness, in joy."
The song, produced by Mike Rocha (Black Pistol Fire, Bedouin Soundclash, Electric Youth), comes together with a fast, constantly moving and whirling video by Samuel Scott.
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ZR