Erin Anne's work as a guitarist, synthesist, singer, and songwriter is informed by her writing and research into queer ways of hearing and making music. She works from the assumption that there's no such thing as objective listening -- that everything we listen to is shaded by who we are, where we've been, and the people with whom we share our experience. Her incisive, guitar-laced synth-pop cuts through hegemonic notions of virtuosity and canon-building, inviting listeners to share in the delight of sensory experience, where musical pleasure is made anew. Originally from New Jersey, Erin attended college at Bowdoin and lived for a time in Portland, ME before moving to Los Angeles to pursue her Ph.D. in musicology at UCLA. Her research into the interplay between bodies and technologies, as well as queer subjectivity in pop, directly inflects her songwriting and production. As a teenager in New Jersey, Erin had limited access to queer art and music that reflected her identity. After beginning her undergraduate studies, she found her world blown open by the documentary The Punk Singer, which traces the life and career of Kathleen Hanna, singer in the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Inspired by Hanna, Erin started her own riot grrrl band and began feeling out the ways the guitar could create sounds outside of masculinist ideals of physical skill -- how she could rearrange sound according to her own pleasure. Erin released her debut solo album, Tough Love, in 2019, and signed a deal with Carpark Records soon after. Her sophomore record, Do Your Worst, is due from Carpark in 2022. On both albums, Erin merges her voice with its technological accompaniments, seeding delightful bewilderment about where the human ends and where the machinery supporting it begins. For her, it's an illusory seam. The real fun starts where everything that's supposed to be kept separate starts flowing together, germinating new shapes in the mess.
