Lex Walton - Lola By The Kinks
by Kay Bien
We are a drama blog now because we only get 5 page impressions a month.
Let’s get through the silly shit quickly. Moby did a “Honest Playlist” interview with The Guardian, and the Kinks ended up catching strays when he said “Lola” was no longer listenable because it was transphobic. Dave Davies is somehow very earnestly hyper online and was deeply offended by this. I can understand younger people processing old art without context, but Moby knows who the Kinks were.
You can find some troubling Kinks lyrics if you go looking for them. I once acquired 500 8-track cassettes and an 8-track player from Craigslist. I spent an entire Summer revisiting the collective recorded output of the '60s and '70s. I had every release by the Beatles, but it was the insurmountable stack of Kinks that captured my attention. After about 5 listens, the tapes would launch from the woodgrain sound box and vomit spools of ribbon. It made the whole endeavor seem like a secret mission to absorb as much as I could while these magic cassettes were still present on this earth. I think I heard every Kinks song ever at least once, often while respooling an 8-track with a pencil. Moby, putting "Lola" in the crosshairs when "Art Lover" was right there, is wild.
Growing up when I did, I looked for Queer representation in Rock & Roll wherever I could find it. This is why a lot of people have a fondness for a song like 'Lola,' even if the language isn’t modern. The community was pretty quick to call Moby weird. A cool thing that came out of it was that Lex Walton posted a cover of the song and got a shout-out from Dave Davies.
“A very talented fan sent me her cover of Lola. I love it. I appreciate all the support fans have shown for our song. Nice to see the younger generation embrace it as well.”
Lex Walton! There is no shortage of people who will tell you that she is the future of music, and they are probably right.
I first got to Walton through Ezra Furman, whom I only found through the Sex Education soundtrack. They have a haunting, fuzzy track together called “Tie Me to the Train Tracks” that adds a level of noise to Furman's often quiet sound, mixing incredibly well.
Walton has multiple albums and projects of lo-fi noise and transgressive art for a hyper online generation, but I find myself relating to it even though I am approaching 50. I logged my hours getting trout slapped by strange older men on IRC in the early 90’s, iykyk. The first time I listened to I Want You to Kill Me, I was deeply overwhelmed. This wall of expressive lo-fi bedroom noisy jangle-pop grabs you and doesn’t let go. It’s familiar but also feels dangerous and new. The track "Hyperconfessional And Overwhelmingly Sincere" kicks me in the teeth every time I listen to it, but then it’s followed by a few sonically whimsical songs that might as well be dental work.
I will leave you with “Great Scott Taco Bell,” which is a beautifully haunting reminder that Great Scott is now a Taco Bell. I hope you enjoy Lex Walton, and keep an eye out for her inevitable Musical dominance.
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