Amelia Riggs -- CREATURE
The act of creation is exhilarating and terrifying -- and thoroughly explored in Amelia Riggs' examination of Susan Stryker's Frankenstein essay, CREATURE.
The act of creation is exhilarating and terrifying – after all, as Victor Frankenstein learns in the classic horror novel, you have to take responsibility for the things you make...and you can't control how they behave in the world. So what happens when what you create is...yourself? CREATURE, the lastest masterwork from Amelia Riggs, seeks to answer that question.
The album is framed by Susan Stryker's formative essay "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix." In the essay, Stryker speaks from the Creature's point of view: claiming an act of self-creation that some – particularly the medical establishment – would consider unnatural, but the will to thrive and birth oneself, and the rage that a transphobic world begets, is an empowering and creative act itself.
CREATURE finds Riggs tearing apart the stitches and reveling in the new seams she creates. "Creature4Creature" hints at that comfort – a tenderly finger-picked track with distorted tape fuzz, gently illustrating the small intimacies of fully taking someone in – and the intensity that can breed as well. Here, Riggings explores creation and re-creation as a mutual act: the ways we feed off each other – in many sense.
By contrast, "Pale Fire/November" seems to recall a controlling relationship, like the one between Frankenstein and the Creature. Riggings wonders:
"When I was younger he read to me the book pale fire and he taught me about how the book worked and what the point of it was. Now I'm older and I'm always asking myself, was he right about anything?"
When the relationship becomes about making the person in your image, nothing can prosper. But as trust grows, so does interdependence, the exchange of "secrets and loaded guns and buttons to press" in the final verse. As the music swells, Riggs' voice fades in and out of the mix, making her voice into another instrument in the arrangement.
"Worrystone," by contrast, is full of warmth, even as Riggs begs for the destruction of the walls she constructs around herself. "Who am I to say no to a face/So willing to try?"
"Weights in the Stitches" channels the rage of being made to feel like a monster in one's own skin. The pulsing kick drum and insectoid snare create a harsh ambiance for the questing piano. It's a stark contrast for a song in which Riggs confesses to how hard it is to hide holding things together.
Yet even amidst pain and betrayal, Riggs' soundscapes are all-encompassing as if cocooning you with healing – never overwhelming. You can find this impulse across Riggs' impressive discography: every album is an invitation inside her heart, but there is always a generosity of spirit, a quest for something more, no matter what else is going on. It's the spirit of survival, no matter what our would-be masters' plans are for us.
