Malls of America

A few weeks back, in reference to Nina Sky, I wrote about a type of female act that's been missing in action the past few years (replaced by disco divas), and that is the gum-snapping, street smart East Coast-ish (though really she's from Everywhere, USA) chick in the vein of early Madonna or Debbie Deb and Lisa Lisa..sort of a hood rat, mall rat type with big hair and earrings.

Nite Jewel (AKA Ramona Gonzalez), a new lo-fi, 8-track usin', multimedia artist from L.A. is...not that girl. But as I was watching this video (she was recommended by a friend of a friend who said that all her vinyl LPs have sold out) I thought to myself that she's sort of on the right track with the graffiti covered van behind her. Throw in some big gold doorknocker earrings and an ironic 8-ball jacket, but still keep the Advisory Circle sounding songs and she's got something new happening here. An artsy genetic mutation of both M.I.A. and the hood rat type:

She's a little spacy, like the Mr. Oizo video from the other day. Nite Jewel has already collaborated with Ariel Pink and the Italians Do It Better crew and is about to graduate from Occidental College. Anthem asked what she has been listening to:

Ever since I started going to Oxy and really seriously studying again, I haven't listened to any vocal music. I just have to listen to pure electronic experimental stuff, otherwise I get distracted. But to me that music is so sad. It's really—it's very isolated. A lot of the German stuff that was coming out of a post-war ideology is really sad. Trying to find your identity in a world that doesn't accept you and things like that. I relate to it! I relate to—in a very uneducated and ignorant sense—I've never been to Germany or hang out with German people—but there's something about the music, and those philosophers, that I really relate. Like I said in another interview, they have the perfect amount of self-confidence and self-doubt. 


Nite Jewel Weak for Me mp3