Now based in Portland, Oregon D’vorah Maya was raised in the Chicago area, where an early obsession with The Beatles led to her getting her first guitar aged eight. In fact, Maya’s upbringing was rich with music. Car rides were soundtracked by classic rock and Motown, and her mother had what she describes as an “impeccable taste in workout music” (the likes of Blondie, Boy George, Fleetwood Mac and Roxy Music). This childhood exposure to decades of popular music awakened an understanding of the vast possibilities across styles and genres, and moulded Maya as an artist uninhibited by labels. She played in punk bands as a highschooler, studied blues and jazz guitar for a while at college, and taught herself how to play bass and keyboards, all the while establishing a distinctive voice as a songwriter.
The result of all these years of creation and experimentation, You Can’t Erase Us is the debut D’Vorah Maya album, which releases today on Grimalkin Records. As you might expect, it’s a record which draws on elements from across the musical spectrum, utilising synths and electro-acoustic instruments to create a distinctive sound that’s part pop, part folk, part electronica. Opener ‘one by one we disappear’ is an instrumental piece comprised of soothing synths and crystalline electronics, a gently poignant beginning to a record that is unafraid to convey its messages in both a whisper and a shout.
This opening segues into the tonally very different title track, with its galloping drums, infectious handclaps and dramatic vocals. It’s one of the most capital-P “pop” moments on the record, sounding like an underground smash hit from the late 80s that’s lay dormant for thirty years. It’s also the first introduction to the record’s thematic concerns, both a celebration of trans and queer identities and something like a lament for what they are forced to endure. The message that feels particularly timely during this period of increasing animosity towards those communities, and one all the more empowering for the way in which it’s delivered. “Both a battle cry against those who attempt to negate our existence and a portrait of the toll such negation can take on those forced to endure it,” as the label puts it. “Living undercover or buried alive,” Maya sings, “the future is our right, right to survive,” before going on to the repeated chorus line in a moment of defiance that sums up the entire album. You can’t erase us.
Elsewhere across the record, D’vorah Maya melts down all those inspirations from her upbringing and crafts them into new shapes. ‘the prison ventriloquist’ is a folk-tinged pop song as smooth and rounded as a pebble, ‘best behaviour aches over bare acoustic guitar, and the sunshiney acoustic guitar and perky percussion of ‘children of an endless war’ highlight the golden threads of hope it offers anyone going through identity struggles.
Even individual songs refuse to sit still. ‘follow the rain’ begins with cold sci-fi synths and downbeat lyrics (“I’ll follow the rain down to the sea floor again / where the cold broken light in my face is as warm as your embrace”), but bursts into technicolour energy between each verse, while the country and classic rock-influenced ‘fading gold spheres’ pairs rich vocal melodies with cathartically shredded guitar. Even the seemingly monolithic closer ‘the heavens will open the control towers will collapse’ turns out to be no monolith at all, its sludgy, reverbed build evolving in the closing minutes. The dark weight shed in favour of sparkling transcendence, the lyrics ending as a prophecy or promise. “Inevitable / inevitable confrontation.”
These final words capture the spirit of a release Grimalkin describe as “a document of loss, survival and resilience in the face of personal and collective trauma… imbued with a sense of urgency and defiant hopefulness.” Because You Can’t Erase Us contains multitudes. Offers pain, despair and hope side by side. And while this hopefulness cannot be said to fully triumph over the competing forces, it is the thing which ultimately shines through. Because no matter how violent or sustained the anti-trans movement becomes, D’vorah Maya is proof that queer and trans folk are not going anywhere. That they will not be erased.
