Artist Close- Up: Too Attached’s Anger Celebrates Releasing Rage
When you hear somebody say, I am making an album celebrating “racialized rage”, your ears perk up. In these times, where racism, and thus hate crimes, are on the rise, you might not feel “racialized rage” is a good party theme. Yet, Too Attached’s album, Angry, there is something powerful and wonderful about acknowledging your anger, your right to be angry, and learning the history of this inherited rage.
For the blacks and browns of this world, it has never been easy. There is not one point in time when you can go back and say, “Wow, being black was such a privilege back then!”. Yet, in an era where saying “Black Lives Matter” could be considered a threat, Too Attached have created music to explain that such statements are made from the threatened: not the threatener. Tracks like, “Bare Minimum” and “Diversity”, show how black skin has been commodified as cool and popular, but what about human or real? When your only options at being socially recognized are to become either demagogic, i.e Beyonce, or treated as a criminal; can you say your are valued? Too attached are trying to sonically break the fantasies and myths that define people’s perception of brown skin, gender, and sexuality, in hopes that music, a spiritual outlet, stirs a spiritual response.
From “Veins” to “Love Is Not Love”, Too Attached are lyrically aimed at showing that for all humanity progresses, it does not grow up. History has been divided according to the times we have warred over superficial things like, skin, and forgot the immeasurable value of a soul. Beneath arrangements that seem more aimed for a club then a forum, Too Attached dance you into newer thoughts, which is refreshing. I cannot say that I have heard many say something new about love or how humanity loves, but the duo/ pair of siblings want to create music with meaning.
With heavy baselines, zipping synths, and disco-like beats, Vivek Shraya & Shamik Bilgi sing straight in their pleading tones for societal atonement. Their vocals lace as if they were a warm quilt being sewn to cover a much splashier back-drop/ opinion. It is not easy and may not be recommended to tell people they are not loving right or enough, but, in this era, it seems like too obvious a truth to go unsaid. To Buy Angry On February 2 or Learn More About Too Attached Click Here.
