#I’m also hugely autistic and love categorising stuff

[laz-kay]

I have an interview tomorrow at the library I practically lived in as a child, but it’s a very part time role that I - economically - cannot afford to accept.

On the other hand, I absolutely despise my current job and wish to burn the building to the ground every damn day. Mental health over financial stability battle commences🫡

[forgot-how-catflap-works]

The GUPPY Appreciation Zone (and some stuff about being gay and possibly an alien)

You have entered the GUPPY Appreciation Zone. Please remain seated and keep your appendages within the designated zone for the duration of this appreciation. The GUPPY Appreciation Zone does not accept liability for any tentacles, tendrils or fronds harmed through the disregardment of these instructions. 

What is GUPPY and how does one appreciate it? GUPPY is a band that originated in LA about seven years ago, presumably through a process involving primordial goo and alien technology. The most effective way to appreciate GUPPY is to play American Cowboy – at full volume – and jiggle your body around the food preparation area of your habitat while loudly singing the refrain, “I’m an American Cowboy, and my stomach hurts like shit”.  

This is not a review of GUPPY’s latest album Something is Happening, because I'm not really qualified for that. I could say how much I love vocalist J’s playful inflections that make them extra fun to sing along to; or I could tell you how great it is they use a slide whistle in Mayor Pt.2, and how the track develops this wild, galloping, circus-clown quality that just gets better the more you listen to it. But really I just want to appreciate them. This is the GUPPY Appreciation Zone afterall. Not The Smart Bitch Who Knows Stuff About Music Zone. 

(Clip clop horse cop, City hall salami. Kiss your baby, Now I am your mommy)

Previously described as “the new gayer, Green Day” by Out Magazine, GUPPY’s music could best be defined as tenderpunk, a term coined by Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin who is also the band's producer. 

I lifted that tenderpunk insight from this Swim into Sound blog post but I did already know about the Sarah Tudzin connection because I AM VERY COOL AND KNOW THINGS ABOUT COOL AND TRENDY MUSIC. NO I DO NOT HAVE RECEIPTS.

As someone who never got into Green Day, I can’t really say how that comparison stacks up. Their drummer Gabbi is a huge Green Day, and the first album had a rough, straightforward garage sound to it along with the kind of atmosphere you only get when everyone involved is having fun. Is that the sort of thing Green Day is known for? I literally have no idea. 

What I can confirm however is that GUPPY's music is deeply gay, and the kind of gay that is difficult to quantify. Speaking as an autistic, navel gazing kind of queer I often feel disconnected from large swathes of popular gay culture. I’m not really here for drag queens and Lady Gaga and the sort of technicolour hedonism that tends to monopolise portrayals of queer culture in modern media. It’s fine, pop off, live your best life etc. It’s just not my speed. But because it’s the default depiction of queerness I’m left feeling like I’m somehow not the right kind of queer.  Like I'm an alien.

Speaking to Out Magazine after the release of their first album in 2017, J said: “GUPPY is all about having fun with your friends in a totally unchecked and spontaneous way. This is a space I think that a lot of femme, nonbinary, queer folk don't get the chance to occupy. Like, yeah, we've all seen Bam Margera and Tyler the Creator be silly menaces in a fun and lovable way, but I just wanna say there are some new freakin' menaces in town. And these new menaces are soft as fuck because being soft never stopped anyone from having fun. So stay soft, my LGBTQ cuties, and please remember to continue enjoying yourself as an act of resistance.”

GUPPY 's queernes makes sense to me. It transcends sexual and gender identity; social norms I exist outside of through my mere existence as a trans dyke. The labels I chose to define myself are more for the benefit of a society that feels the need to categorise me rather than something I need for myself.

It’s a queerness of the soul. An almost Victorian definition of queer, before it meant gay and it meant, you know, queer. Odd, peculiar, not right somehow. Something amiss. Like, what is that person doing with their arms? Have they ever even used their arms before? Are they an actual alien doing a really shit impression of a human? Who do I call about this? 

From that transcendental queerness GUPPY blooms in all their glory. They would rather eat the pavement than kiss Nacy Pelosi's boot. They were made mayor for the day and all they got were their feelings hurt. They’re texting God in their head. They ate their own homework (the dog made them do it).

I could pick almost any lyric from any track of the new album to illustrate the difficult to define queerness of GUPPY, but for whatever reason the opening lines of Nature Song feel right.

Go out in the front yard you’ll find Ian pulling weeds

Go out in the backyard and that’s where you’ll find me

I’m digging up worms

I’m taking them to church

I’m taking them to church

If you can’t understand how that’s gay, I don’t know what to tell you.