I was just talking about how badly I missed getting new music from EMA. Past Life Martyred Saints, the solo debut from former Gowns leader Erika M. Anderson, is still one of my favorite albums of this century, and the two that followed were great, too. Right now, we're coming up on a decade since the release of Exile In The Outer Ring, the most recent EMA album. So it's extremely cool to see her randomly showing up again with a Motels cover that she recorded for an art piece.
I'm pretty sure the last thing that Erika M. Anderson released under the EMA name was a Modest Mouse cover from a 2021 Under The Radar compilation. In 2023, she started a supergroup called Thrash Palace with Talk Normal's Sarah Register and XBXRX's Vice Cooler, and they released a very cool two-song single on Sub Pop but then nothing else. Now, here she comes with her take on Berkeley new wave originators the Motels' 1979 single "Total Control."
Even in its original form, "Total Control" was a satirical six-minute epic about how you might sell your soul for total control over someone else. Tina Turner covered the song on the 1985 We Are The World album. EMA's version is part of "Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach," which she describes as "a hybrid media performance by EMA and artist Tabitha Nikolai." Here's a little more info, per the Bandcamp description:
Part origin story, part healing spell. "Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach" is a feature-length duet performance in which Erika M. Anderson (EMA) and visual artist Tabitha Nikolai use video game technologies to build out the psycho-sexual inner world of a girl-child in the '80s. Soundtracked by modular synth and guitar, a narrator searches for her shape amid commercial detritus, degraded 3D scans and a Polly Pocket apocalypse.
Cool! EMA's seven-minute take is pretty faithful to the original, but she reworks those prim new wave hooks by throwing them into heavy, sprawling space-rock overdrive. It sounds sick as hell. Below, check out EMA's "Total Control" cover and the Motels' original.
You can find more info on "Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach" here. It'll screen 11/21 at Portland's Tomorrow theater, with both EMA and Tabitha Nikolai in attendance.
