Okay. Hi, everyone. Bigthony Humtano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new cumgirl8 album, The Eighth Cumming.

Only eight? Those are rookie numbers.

Okay, okay, okay. Look, before I say anything, I'm sure there's a lot of questions people may have. But yes, in fact, the band name and album title you are looking at with this video are real. I actually feel like CG8 is one of the realest things I've heard in a minute, even with the band's presentation being as ostentatious as it is. But that's the point.

The band's existence serves as a reminder of the absurdism and defiant irreverence that used to define a lot of underground pop and rock music decades prior to now, back when there was a bolder, clearer line between what's actually popular and what's actually not. Then, while in one breath, it is cool that the internet has broken down a lot of those barriers and created a paradigm where it seems like just about anybody can make it with the right song and the right viral moment. It's led to a musical landscape where everything is so goddamn calculated and strategized because as an artist, your every move and post is being seen and consumed and judged.

What the fuck is the point? We're making art. Not everything needs to be so serious all the time.

But yeah, it's led to a lot of artists playing to algorithms and trends rather than crowds and scenes of people, which I get because the internet has separated artists off from crowds, off from people. So rather than the art collective or the local venue being the place for experimentation and trial and error, now it's the internet.

Maybe I'm pathologizing a bit here, but there's something old-school about the wild amateurish flair that I feel like the band is approaching this record with. There's a vibrant energy to the performances and the writing and the personality of this album that reminds me of when bands like B-52s or ESG or The Slits were bursting onto the scene with their debut albums. But also add on to that an awareness of the ultra-femme indie pop and rock that had New York City in a chokehold in the 2000s with artists like Peaches or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Kathleen Hanna's La Tigre. Cg8 are also very obviously students of all things goth and goth adjacent, as there's no shortage of songs on this record with an overtly eerie vibe, just in time for Halloween.

But yeah, something tells me fans of bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees will get a whole lot out of this record. But as grim as many of the sounds on this record might be on the surface, the band never seems to take themselves too seriously, which again, I think is refreshing, especially given that the first single was "Karma Police", which is a gutsy move because obviously any alternative music head is instantly going to think Radiohead cover when in fact the song is this tense and disorienting story about lost belongings, chasing down an air tag, trying to get the police involved. They're no help. It's a chaotic tale that's perfectly conveyed through this really cluttered mix of punchy beats, bass, synth sequences, and various vocal parts overlapping across the track. Mental masturbation.

So yeah, interesting song about an interesting predicament. And subsequent tracks from here are a combination of odd and also broadly relatable, like the track "ahhhh", which makes good on its title with a blood curdling scream in the middle of its run time. But yeah, this track is a brooding piece of goth rock with some really shrill guitars and catchy refrains about not wanting to go anywhere, being invited out to an event or something you just want to avoid. And between the mentions of tea being spilled and there being so many faces but feeling so alone, the social anxiety on this track is at a fever pitch.

Following this is the song "Mercy", which is a surprising moment of vulnerability and tenderness in the tracklist, with super-sharpened melodic hooks that somehow slice through the scuzz that most of the track is covered in. But yeah, it's a very compelling song all about succumbing to your desires and to a degree, your lust, and also learning to trust as well within the context of intimacy and feeling at someone's mercy because of it.

Then "UTI" is an eccentric, explosive, out of control song about exactly that. And I love how sonically and emotionally this track just covers the topic from multiple angles. There are elements of the track meant to reflect the frustration of dealing with the UTI and the pain and anguish that comes along with it. Then there are deeper lyrical details on the track about how this UTI or a UTI could be contracted, most likely being mentioned in hopes that, I don't know, that they could be avoided for any number of listeners of the song in the future. Finally, I love how the track reaches this ultra-aggressive industrial rock crescendo right at the very end.

Now, deeper into the LP, there are some moments where I think the songwriting really could have been boned up a bit with meandering talk-sung vocals on the verses that don't really lead into super strong choruses, like on "Girls Don't Try" as well as "Simulation".

There are similar shortcomings on tracks like "iBerry" as well as "Hysteria", but rather than getting glittery the unsettling beds of instrumentation, instead, here we're getting something that's just more on the spooky side. For such a short record, I think there may be a bit of an over-emphasis on that side of things. The band's earlier EPs had a lot more of a balance between those moments and tracks that were a lot more lofi and punky and out there.

Still, I thought the closing track, "Something New", was a surprising, peppy, and warm way to end the record. I caught some aesthetic parallels to acts like YACHT as well as Laurie Anderson on this track. For the most part, what we get here is a very hopeful, very cultish piece of electropop that's all about finding love, the first step of which is loving yourself. The track is filled with mantra-like refrains and jangly guitars, heavenly synthesizers, it's a beautiful tune that showcases cumgirl8's versatility, which, honestly, given how odd some of the material was up until this point, I just didn't see coming. No pun intended.

But yeah, some tracks pale in comparison to others on this record. The album overall is a little scant. I think you maybe could have even cobbled an amazing EP together out of the best moments here. For what it's worth, you got to get started somewhere with your first record. This is a little rough around the edges like some debuts tend to be. But still, there's enough character here. There are enough strong tracks and moments to say that this band is one worth watching, even if the presentation is a little sloppy for now.

I love the eccentric and incendiary energy the band is coming to the table with on the best moments here, and hopefully that gets further embraced on more music into the future. I'm feeling a strong 6 to a light 7 on this record

Anthony Fantano. cumgirl8. Forever.