Review: Danny Denial – fuck danny denial

There are two kinds of artists: those who primarily chase beauty and those who primarily chase change. Both are perfectly valid ambitions, but the latter group is arguably more virtuous, and also more commonly misunderstood. They make art that purposely challenges the norm, that strives to court resistance and shift mentalities. Music made for this purpose can be abrasive, confrontational, ugly even – some would consider that its own source of beauty – but easy placidness and only ever diminishes the process of growth. Those who would dismiss the works of acts like Lingua Ignota or Pink Siifu as “unlistenable” are not actually listening.

Danny Denial, underground filmmaker and frontperson of Seattle band Dark Smith, operates in that virtuous space, creating and releasing art that aims to spark discussions about queerness and mental health. Even accommodating for how prolific he’s been over the last few years, his new solo record, fuck danny denial, is unlike anything he’s done before. Across its ten tracks, Denial blurs genres and moods with an auteur’s confidence. It’s gothic, it’s current, it’s sensual, it’s vulnerable, and with its simple distorted chords and dark atmosphere it’s unmistakably in line with Seattle’s musical legacy.

Denial’s previous projects pulse with a sense of alienation, and fuck danny denial lives in that anxious space. It palpably fluctuates between the highs of mania and the lows of depression, and deftly documents the emotional fallout that comes with it. The record’s fittingly bifurcated opener, “mercer summit block party/brand new skirt,” lays that motif down quickly. The first part of the track, an ode to the eponymous local music festival held in 2018, finds Denial at a fulfilled, if brief, high point. From there, he spirals into uncertainty and self-doubt, excoriating against performative social subterfuge (“Am i cool enough for your love”), yearning for real connection (“scorpio eyes”) and drowning in the overload (“CCCHOKEMEEE”).

Queer identity, and how it relates to the fear of rejection, takes center stage on this record. Much of that discussion is wrapped in the vectors of the human gaze, in what it means to be looked at and how it differs from being seen. In fuck danny denial’s world, “cool” is a both a volatile currency and a crucial social metric, tied inextricably to worthiness. Yet being queer makes automatic social compatibility that much more difficult, and that much more desirable. You grow up wearing a mask, eventually developing a hypersensitivity to the masks others wear. That wary feeling courses throughout the record, in the solitary shower breakdown of “conditioner” and the plainspoken yearning of “scorpio eyes”. (The voices that close that song come from Gregg Araki’s 1995 film “Totally Fucked Up,” a classic entry in new queer cinema; its inclusion speaks both to Denial’s interest in filmmaking and his dedication to honest portrayals of queerness in media.)

The character Denial plays might be in a constant internal crisis, but as an artist Denial contrastively holds an incredible command over his craft. The record glides fluidly through several different styles at once, from festival pop to emo to gothic rock to skate-punk to grunge and back. As mentioned, Seattle itself feels ingrained into the record, both literally and aesthetically. The city’s underground scene covers the walls here, from Black Tones bassist Eva Walker’s signature howl on “totally fucked up” to omnipresent rapper DoNormaal’s swagger on “i’m not your type” (which also brilliantly samples Hole) to the collective power of members from Rat Queen, Dirty Dirty, Slow Elk and Dark Smith on “white tears fake queers”.  The record itself, partially mixed and fully mastered in Seattle, lives under overcast skies, in dark houses and chilly, rain-soaked driveways. And there’s Denial’s voice itself; low and ragged, detached and fried, Denial feels in a lineage with gothic rock vocalists a la Ian Curtis, but bearing a heightened element of drama and a little more dynamic nuance. It’s a remarkable instrument and fits his music well: a weary rasp caked in weltschmerz but still trapped in youthful angst.

Those warring elements come to a head in the record’s finest moment, the seething “everything is terrible.” Against a spectacular rolling drum beat and descending guitar pattern, Denial hits peak existential dread, laying down vivid couplets in the process (“Blow my brains out with a blow dryer/I’m all out of looks to serve”). The amp feedback grows more unhinged, the squall intensifies, and soon Denial’s voice threatens to be subsumed under the gathering noise. Raw emotion, the clashing of thoughts and feelings, the anxious feedback loop, and the push to represent yourself in an unforgiving society; “everything is terrible” is built from that clash, creating a cyclonic vertex around which the rest of the album swirls.

Movement may be the key word here. True to the heart, fuck danny denial moves constantly, from mood to mood and from scene to scene. That movement can’t help but occasionally land in melodrama, but Denial’s charismatic voice, and the sonic help of his company, keeps that melodrama from being stifling and lets it coexist a part of a vibrant, multifaceted expression of pain and joy, highs and lows. To expose your heart to others, and to encourage discussion, can lower your visage of coolness and make the pains of rejection a viable risk, but it’s to Danny Denial’s credit that his latest solo record runs those risks and still succeeds.