Gabrielle Smith has used the alias Eskimeaux for the past seven years, a journey which has seen her musical output morph in substance and style with each passing release. You might imagine musicians shedding their monikers each time, eager to lose missteps or escape preconceptions but Smith has stuck steadfastly with her choice. A not-so-recent Facebook post (in response to appropriation allegations) explained the name in a great detail, explaining how her biological father is Tlingit eskimo and that Eskimeaux was adopted during her teenage years when she felt denied of an identity/cultural heritage:
“Eskimeaux is basically me: it’s an empowered persona that has brought me warmth and fulfilment in times of isolation and confusion about my origins”
And with this knowledge of the origins of the name comes a glimpse into what has shaped Smith’s sound. This is not a beginning. Smith has more or less grown up with Eskimeaux, grown into Eskimeaux. New album O.K. feels like the product of that development, borne out of a sense of purpose and artistic confidence that comes with long hard years of trial and error.
That said, while Eskimeaux is Smith, it would be a misnomer to label the project a solo venture. Quinn Moreland‘s pretty extensive history of Smith’s music career to-date for Impose hints at the influence other musicians have had on Smith, tracing the evolution of Eskimeaux from inception to present, which sees Smith at the centre of a talented group of people in Brooklyn (partly as The Epoch collective) who work together on their various musical projects. When you thank the likes of Told Slant, Bellows, Yours Are The Only Ears, Florist, Small Wonder, Sharpless and Mitski for helping create your record, you know you are in good hands. As our preview of the album stated back in March:
“While the proof will be in the pudding, it seems O.K. is a testament to the power of gathering good friends and kind strangers who are all pulling in the same direction, a reminder that good, carefully put together art has infinitely more value than whatever the PR men and women try to push at you”
O.K. feels like an epiphany, where Smith has found the required confidence (almost certainly with the help of her friends) to speak openly without distortion or the safety-net of irony. The biggest temptation when feeling isolated and alone is to accentuate the feeling of dissociation, to lie to yourself or others by claiming that being understood (ie. less alone) is not needed. This could be through angry, primal art which strives to remind everyone that they are merely phony, bullshit-ridden animals who will grow old and die, or by creating art so abstract and inhuman that no-one can recognise it, retreating into the false security of faux-mysticism which aims to transcend the need for human connection. While Eskimeaux was never near the extreme ends of these avenues, Smith’s early work did see her feelings/message buried beneath a haze of ambient noise. O.K. sees this stripped back in favour of candid pop songs which fit very nicely into The Epoch back catalogue.
The album confronts loneliness head-on, outlining the strange but undeniable fact that each of us are distinct creatures cut off from the thoughts of anyone else, even those who mean the world to us. In lieu of telepathy, we are forced to communicate in crude alternatives, arranging words and gestures haphazardly in the hope of them saying what we really mean. ‘I Admit I’m Scared’, a song which worries about the effects you have one your loved ones, puts this quite beautifully:
“And everything I said
spewed like sparklers from my mouth
they looked pretty as they flew
but now they’re useless and burnt out”
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While all the songs are linked by sincerity, there is a variation of sounds and styles across the album. Opener ‘Folly’ is a folk song bathed in reverb and guitars, the narrator casting a significant other as something magnificent and unknowable. ‘Pocket Full of Posies’ is a creepy, gritty track of vulnerability, while ‘Broken Necks’ is a bona fide pop song, a heartbreaking collapse of a relationship rendered danceable with synths and clap-along percussion and a catchy chorus. Current favourite ‘The Thunder Answered Back’ is more fierce, bubbling with certainty before exploding in the cathartic refrain of “You coward, you hummingbird”. The track continues with a dramatic closing, euphoric and elemental:
“I screamed out how’d it get this bad? And the thunder answered back
if you know not what you lack then you must unturn your back
Your inside is overcast you are tethered to your past
and it must feel like fucking hell to be a patchwork of yourself,
a bunch of scraps thrown and sewn around your bones
and though you’re alone it’s holding you too tightly.
But who are you?
From where do you come?
What do you believe in?
Whom do you love?”
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The sense of loneliness never leaves, but it’s joined by the acceptance of the weird paradoxical truth that you can never be OK without first recognizing the fact that you won’t always be OK. And, perhaps more importantly, the understanding that everyone is in the same boat. Obviously, for this to be a comfort then people need to make it known, so it’s lucky indeed that ‘Alone at the Party’ is the anthem of this realisation, finding solace and community in the fact that we are all at some level lonely. This is what Eskimeaux does best, she says things that might not be cool or pretty or ‘normal’ in order to help. In this way O.K. is like an unveiling, an opening of the chest, with Smith delving into herself to show us every gruesome detail that we too possess. We see her heart and lungs and rounded ribs, the fragile threads of nerves and blood vessels which twitch and tremble in the spotlight, we see a space lined with thorns or glass or thick black bile in which sits something hard and smooth and bright, something that we recognise despite it having no shape or weight or name. Closer ‘That’s OK’ concludes the viewing, cleansing the cavity with peace and sewing herself back up safe in the knowledge that communication has finally been achieved:
“Frankie is face down in our bed,
you are downstairs
and all I want is to hear you say
is ‘we’re not the same but that’s ok’.”
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O.K. is about reality, the moment we live in and the people we share it with. It’s about the things we want and the things we wish for and the things we can’t control. It’s about doing the best you can and hoping it’s enough, about accepting and learning and growing so that whatever hand you’re dealt, you carve out some semblance of meaning and happiness to make everything worthwhile.
You can buy the album digitally from Eskimeaux’s Bandcamp, on CD/vinyl from Double Double Whammy or on beautiful cassettes from Mt. Home Arts (see below).
Embroidery artwork by Susannah Lee Cutler