Taralie Peterson is releasing another album as Tekla Peterson this month, so it's the perfect time to check out her debut with the project, 2022's Heart Press. The minimally composed but imposing pop album is a kind of break-up album with the world. Its new-wave-inspired bubble-bark rhythms, hypnotically star-scared tufts of synth, and garishly majestic melodies express a pure derivation of emotion that recoils and withers from the glare of reality like a thin wax sheet from a flame. A symbolic embryonic reversal produced by a shock of denial in the face of perceived rejection before the prick of judgment can land a bite. Turning one's psyche into a bath into which they may scrub themselves of the pretense of socially necessary reciprocity in order to shield an aching heart. A galvanizing listen that rides the suffering of a jilted heart as a platform by which one may fully submerge oneself in the death drive's tar-pool. Like being boiled alive on the dance floor in your own sweat. A club mix for the eternally, determinedly alone.
* Every day in March I am writing a review for a different album inspired by a color. Today's color gossip is suitably sickly in complexion, a flawless match for an album that rejects all of humanity in order to nurse it's wounded pride.
