As the frontperson and creative force behind Wax Idols, Hether Fortune has cultivated an aesthetic of icy cool—punk rock bravura shrouded in multiple layers of gothy frost. The last Wax Idols record—2013’s sophomore effort Discipline + Desire—was an exercise in sustained tension informed, at least in part, by her training as a professional dominatrix. As a result, the record played like an extended tease—tantalizing the listener with heavily eyelinered pop stylings but still keeping things at a cool remove, always stopping just shy of delivering the kind of massive hook that could have potentially knocked everyone out of their collective creepers.
In contrast, American Tragic is a much more empathetic affair, fully stocked with songs that bear the trappings of gloomy post-punk and the appropriate gray shades of goth, but wraps them around words that articulate real human feelings. While previous Wax Idols tracks sometimes felt like excuses to show off an aesthetic, Tragic manages to unpack a number of complicated ideas, particularly about how much our personal identities are defined by our relationships. And while it would be easy to attach a personal narrative to songs like "Goodbye Baby" and "Lonely You" (based on the fact that Fortune reportedly went through an ugly divorce prior to making this record), the album strives to be much more than a classic breakup record. In the end, it’s a record about getting over.
The album opens with "A Violent Transgression"—a bit of reverby melodrama in which Fortune sets the tone for the record by singing "This is an absolute negativity/ A sudden, irrevocable plunge" before ultimately concluding that "Desire/ It’s violent." The violence of wanting—both wanting in and ultimately desperately wanting out of a relationship—lies at the heart of American Tragic. The most compelling tracks are those that deal with the queasy malaise of missing something you know is ultimately bad for you. On the glorious "Lonely You"—a bit of Anglophilic guitar pop that sounds like some long-lost "120 Minutes"-worthy single that never was—Fortune pauses to pine for a lover that is better left in the dust. "It was a sorry gilded cage/ That bound our hearts together," she laments, "Now I just want to push the weight of you away forever." Elsewhere, on "Goodbye Baby" the notion of a collapsing romance is both devastating and empowering: "I’m not wasting time/ I’m taking my heart back/ I’m taking what’s mine."
If Fortune sounds newly empowered here it’s for good reason. American Tragic is, in every way, a very personal missive. She wrote and recorded everything herself (except the drums, played by Rachel Travers) and the collection unspools like a clever synthesis of dark new wave and late-'80s post-punk without ever sounding too much like an obvious pastiche of either. "At Any Moment" approaches Sky Ferreira levels of mainstream pop accessibility, while "Deborah" gives a twist on the classic doomed heroine ode ("Had you pegged for a gay boy but you were just a playboy") and wraps it up in Cure-like guitar lines and a sprinkling of drum machine handclaps. On the other hand, "Severely Yours", with its references to sexual power dynamics and submission ("You can be the Marquis tonight"), is a little too on the nose for someone who has already mined this kind of territory so thoroughly in the past (and there should be a moratorium on non-ironic references to crucifixion and martyrdom for any kind of goth-approved record that isn’t actually Pretty Hate Machine).
Mostly though, Tragic avoids living up to its namesake by sidestepping cliché and never overstaying its welcome. At a relatively brief nine tracks, the record is a perfectly paced blast of dark pop that deftly reflects Fortune’s growing prowess as a songwriter—here offering everything from slow burn dirges on romantic grief to perfectly executed synth jams about emotional freedom. As a result, it’s not a surprise that she increasingly draws comparisons to women like Chrissie Hynde and Siouxsie Sioux—powerful forces who knew how to strike a perfect balance between authority and vulnerability. By opening up and shedding some of her icy veneer on American Tragic, Fortune places herself in very good company.
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