I make some guys nervous as hell, and I stopped giving a shit about it years ago. Last week, after a show, some dude watched me carry my amp to my car and called me intimidating. I didn’t ask for his help. Didn’t need it. That’s apparently threatening. What he meant was: you’re hot and competent, and I don’t know how to deal with both, so I’m gonna make it your personality problem instead of mine. This happens constantly. Be good at something, refuse to play helpless, and suddenly you’re a threat nobody knows how to categorize. Jessi Robertson’s ‘Shadow War: Singularity’ gets it.
Robertson opens with “I’m the creature no one knows / Stranger stirring deep below / Like a wolf in sheepskin / Omen, emblem, ill wind,” and she just calls herself the creature right there. First line. I’ve been that. The stranger who doesn’t compute. The bad sign walking into a room full of dudes who play worse than I do, but somehow I’m the problem. You hide. Perform harmless until you can’t anymore. Survive spaces that want you the fuck gone.
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“Everyday is a battle to stay on my feet / I’m a soldier firing on my enemy / Unwillingly / I’m the enemy.” Fuck. This one hit. You wake up already policing yourself. Already cutting your own edges down before anyone else gets the chance. Because if you show too much attitude, someone’s ready to call you a bitch and mean it as a threat. So you become your own enemy. Do their job for them. “Unwillingly” – yeah. You don’t choose that war. You just wake up one day in the middle of it.
The production on this is slow, atmospheric alt-rock. It doesn’t try to comfort you or build to some big fucking release. It just sits in the tension. Good.
“Smile incandescent as a new sun / Eyes deepening, twin canyons / Mantis perched on a tree limb / Hidden, fatal, femme.” The mantis. Perfect. Looks delicate, waits, strikes, done. I’ve smiled through entire conversations while planning exactly what I’d say if someone pushed one more inch. Weaponize your own face when the world can’t handle you being pretty and sharp at once. Robertson pulls from golem and Frankenstein shit – creatures that got made into fucking monsters. When you won’t pick between feminine or dangerous, people pick monster for you.
Robertson’s in Nashville now but came up in Brooklyn. Two albums. Compared to Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks, PJ Harvey – women who kept their teeth sharp. Dark Matter came out on Halloween after her autism diagnosis. It uses space to talk about being told you don’t belong. This track is part of the Singularity Series where she’s reworking songs with other artists. Aaron Berg from Mountainwalker collaborated, and the tension he brought doesn’t resolve. It shouldn’t.
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“You might see a golem held up by pride / A willing vessel, barely alive / I do what I do so I can survive.” Pride as the only goddamn thing keeping you standing. People see you upright and assume strength. Don’t see you’re running on fumes and refusal to let them watch you break. Golems get made from mud, shaped by other people’s hands, given jobs they didn’t choose. That’s what it is. You didn’t ask to be the monster. You just got tired as hell of explaining you’re human.
Then the bridge: “I rose like a ghost up from the mud / I opened my arms to the heavens above / No weapon more terrifying than love.” Three lines. Monster to human. That’s the scariest shift in the whole track. Because when you’ve survived by being sharp, love is fucking terrifying. Love asks for soft. It asks you to show the parts you’ve kept hidden because showing them has gotten you hurt before. I know what it feels like when someone tries to get close, and every defense slams into place. Not because they’re dangerous. Because vulnerability after years of armor feels like standing in fucking traffic.
Robertson’s calling out what happens when you’re feminine and strong and the world calls you creature instead of a woman. The predator imagery isn’t some symbolic shit. It’s what gets said when you refuse to be just one thing. ‘Shadow War: Singularity’ doesn’t soften that. I said what I said.
