Post-Punk.com
  • Home
    • Contact Us
    • About
    • Subscribe
    • Terms Of Use
    • Privacy Policy
  • Bands
    • Revival Bands
    • Labels
  • Reviews
  • Fashion
  • Log In
  • Home
  • Bands
  • Reviews
  • Fashion
  • Log In
0 Likes
0 Followers
0 Followers
Subscribe
Post-Punk.com
Post-Punk.com Post-Punk.com
  • Home
    • Contact Us
    • About
    • Subscribe
    • Terms Of Use
    • Privacy Policy
  • Bands
    • Revival Bands
    • Labels
  • Reviews
  • Fashion
  • Log In
  • Collaborations
  • Interview
  • New Releases

Dissecting The Siren Call of Nostalgia With Hennessey’s “Let’s Pretend (It’s The 80s)”

  • May 12, 2020
  • Alice Teeple
0
0
0
Image

“Let’s dance like we’ve got money.”

The siren is wailing, friends.

As of this writing, New York City miserably wallows in its third month of quarantine. The fine people of Gotham are oversaturated with a collective dark night of the soul, spending much of this unfamiliar, eerily-quiet solitude sitting around, navel-gazing, the days melting away as millions grapple with their individual days of reckoning.  Times of uncertainty are perfect for an indulgence in nostalgia. Remember those GOOD times? Or, at the very least, remember those good times the music journalists wrote of during one of the (many) heydays of New York’s past? Let’s pick one, let’s indulge. Let’s pretend it’s the 80s. In this fantasy, the Mudd Club’s still kickin’ at 77 White Street, chock full of dilettantes and misfits who haven’t yet been taken to Kingdom Come by another dreadful pandemic. Let’s regress. Repeat after me in Thatcher-ese: Greed is good, Avoid the Noid, I want my MTV. 

Photo: Mike Martinez

Hennessey, comprised of multidisciplinary artists Leah Hennessey, E.J. O’Hara, and Noah Chevan (with Malachy O’Neill in recording sessions) has set out on a mission to create vintage-pop obsessed electronic dance punk with their magnificent Let’s Pretend (It’s The 80s). The track “shines like a rebirth, rather than a rehash.” If we close our eyes, the fading New York we mourn lives once again. Leah screams the mantra “Let’s love like we love money” in the chorus, then name drops downtown luminaries Lizzy Mercier Descloux and Maripol. The song is a provocatively chilling bop for today’s political climate. Through pretending and cosplay, we can temporarily ignore the horrors unraveling in our own time, just like the squash-playing yuppies of old.

Leah Hennessey, who literally grew up in the shadow of the specific mythology she simultaneously adores and parodies, brings the absurdist perspective with gusto. Hennessey, a playwright, and creator of underground web series Zhe Zhe (utilizing many of her collaborators for the video), has gained a reputation of deconstructing the bohemian New York artist circles of her parents, as well as mocking the self-obsession of Millennial culture. Hennessey and her crew are proving themselves expert satirists: wickedly funny, yet wildly compassionate.

Hennessey is refreshingly, unabashedly intellectual, with that same zeal for cultural regurgitation that their artistic idols employed. They certainly learned from the best. Synthesizer/drum machine “operator” and Eno-like “non-musician” E.J. O’Hara has been collaborating with Leah “almost since high school.” The band’s video, directed by O’Hara and produced by Jesse Malin and Diane Gentile, cheekily references the cinematic iconography of the decade – Lung Leg’s performance in Richard Kern’s Submit To Me Now (with stop-motion plastic newts); the “Kafkaesque nightmare” in Scorcese’s After Hours. Hennessey’s musical playground is more Criterion Collection than K-Tel Compilation.

“The Nineteen Eighties” is a subject that seems overwhelming its breadth,” says O’Hara.  “It was a time of great change in arts and world events and a time close enough to my life for me to understand its effect in a way that seems real. When confronted with making a music video, I found myself wondering, How to show it? Whether to celebrate it? How specific to get?”

“The 80s we’re referencing is a very specific fantasy of a particular memory of New York,” Leah Hennessey adds. Her video performance flips between Patrick Nagel ice queen and “famous below 14th” dilettante, to grotesque pantomime. “We’re not interested in big hair and aerobics and Memphis design, we were after something subtler and more alluringly sinister. We were very deliberate in our references, because the video is meant to be a kind of “cosplay.” Hennessey admits, with a bit of sheepishness, that her criticism of nostalgia comes from a personal addiction to it. “In a way we’re as guilty as any blogger who posts Painfully Cool Pictures of Some Beautiful Drug Addicts with Pop Stars Before They Were Famous in a Loft in 1981, to Inspire Your Art Basel Wardrobe!” she jokes. “…Although I do still believe in the power of irony.”

“You must satirize the things you really love,” says O’Hara. “I have this deep jealousy of the Pictures Generation Artists because they could just steal an image from an advertisement or remove a background from a photograph and it was cool and new and subversive. I don’t usually trust my instincts or work improvisationally, but for this video I did in a way… I instinctively and improvisationally chose things from the 80s that I liked…and then painstakingly and laboriously ripped them off.” His targets ended up being Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, Richard Prince, Gia, Jack Goldstein, and Peter Gabriel.

Leah Hennessey reminisces about the inspiration for penning the song:

“One weekend in particular, after participating in a performance art happening at MoMA, my friends and I ended up at a diner which had a section on the menu called “A Taste of the 80s”, complete with Health Salads with Jell-o and cottage cheese. At some point we found ourselves being drawn, as though in a trance, down to the Pyramid Club. I had often felt part of my social world was a kind of historical reenactment of downtown New York in the 80s, and while I sometimes judged my peers for their cab-based Chinatown nightlife lifestyle, I realized that weekend that this simulacrum of an underground was in fact, my culture…and that I loved it.”

Photo: Alice Teeple

Hennessey has been performing Let’s Pretend (It’s The 80s) live in downtown clubs for over a year now. Has the Covid pandemic’s societal shift has given the number a heavier new meaning?

“More than ever I find myself relying on fantasy to give meaning and structure to my days, so in that way I think it’s more relatable,” she says. “I also think there are much darker implications of the song that are clearer to me now. I grew up very much in the shadow of the AIDS crisis. My mother’s world was one which continued to be decimated by the pandemic into the 90s, and I have very strong memories of the memorial services and art of that moment. The way she talked about the normalization of death in that time always stuck with me…the deaths from our current pandemic have more of that hyper-normalized quality.”

Hennessey states that one way to cope with the loss and rage at the American government’s “heartless ineptitude” is to put it into historical context.

“If comparing this suffering to the suffering of the 80s, or if comparing the corporate greed of today to the greed of the 80s makes the suffering a little more glamorous or more manageable, then absolutely…let’s pretend.”

Everything’s dark in SoHo now, after all, so we might as well enjoy the video.

Please support Post-Punk.com! You can do so via:

  • Patreon:

  • or directly via Paypal:

  • Or by using our new Contact form here:

 

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Related Topics
  • David Johansen
  • EJ O'Hara
  • Hennessey
  • Jesse Malin
  • Lizzy Mercier Descloux
  • Malachy O'Neill
  • Noah Chevan
Alice Teeple

Alice Teeple is a photographer, multidisciplinary artist, and writer. She is not in Tin Machine.

Previous Article
  • Bands
  • Song Premiere

Mary Onettes Maestro Philip Ekström’s solo Project H.Moon Unveils “Trustblood”

  • May 12, 2020
  • post-punk.com
View Post
Next Article
  • Classic Albums
  • Classic Bands
  • Reissues

Joy Division’s Closer to Receive 40th Anniversary Vinyl Reissue

  • May 13, 2020
  • post-punk.com
View Post
You May Also Like
View Post
  • Bands
  • Interview
  • Tour Dates
  • Tourdates
  • Video Premiere

Seattle Garage Rock Ensemble Biblioteka Debuts Video for “She’s Bad”

  • post-punk.com
  • September 28, 2023
View Post
  • Bands
  • Interview
  • Video Premiere

Surrender to My Will — Gothic Rock Heroes NFD Debut Enchanted New Video and Interview

  • post-punk.com
  • September 26, 2023
View Post
  • Bands
  • Interview

BODYHEAT — An Interview With Mexican-American Darkwave Maven L

  • Alice Teeple
  • September 26, 2023
View Post
  • Album Streaming
  • Bands
  • Classic Bands
  • Clubs
  • New Releases
  • Reviews

Bush Tetras “Sley” At Le Poisson Rouge Record Release Show

  • Alice Teeple
  • September 22, 2023
View Post
  • Classic Bands
  • Interview
  • New Releases
  • Video Premiere

Realm of Minor Angels | An Interview with Steve Kilbey of The Church + Video Premiere

  • Frank Deserto
  • September 12, 2023
View Post
  • Album Streaming
  • Bands
  • Interview

Track by Track — Los Angeles Ethereal Punk Artist Taleen Kali Breaks Down Her Album “Flower of Life”

  • Alice Teeple
  • September 5, 2023
View Post
  • Bands
  • Classic Bands
  • New Releases
  • Singles
  • Song Premiere

Duran Duran Debut Title Track from Halloween Themed Album “Danse Macabre”

  • Alice Teeple
  • August 30, 2023
View Post
  • Compilations
  • New Releases
  • Remix

Listen to Curses’ Club-Primed Remix of Nuovo Testamento’s “Heartbeat” + the “Next Wave Acid Punx DEUX” Compilation Tracklist

  • Andi Harriman
  • August 24, 2023







Post-Punk.com
© Copyright POST-PUNK.COM 2022

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

Please support Post-Punk.com! You can do so via...
  • Patreon:
  • Directly via Paypal:
  • Or by using our new Contact form here:
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Do not sell my personal information.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT