There is something deliciously perverse about timing. Valentine’s Day: roses, restaurants, ritual romance. And here comes Chelsey Boy, Los Angeles singer, songwriter, and multimedia artist, lowering the lights and stretching the room into something cooler, stranger, slightly dangerous.
Formerly one half of Intimatchine and now aligned with Cold Showers, she has long operated in that fertile zone where electronic pulse meets post-punk poise and darkwave desire. Her voice is the instrument that bends the air: at once controlled and on the brink, a tightrope between composure and collapse. It doesn’t shout. It insinuates. It lingers in the bloodstream.
Her cover of Singapore Sling’s 2011 track Freaks feels less like reclamation. The original drifted with minimalist ease; Chelsey Boy slows the bloodstream further, thickens the temperature, and introduces a sly trace of menace. The space widens…the tension tightens. There’s a teasing cruelty at play, an elegance edged with something feral. You at first might think of HTRK’s cool remove, Tamaryn’s gauze, Drab Majesty’s otherworldly glow, Zola Jesus at her most imperious, Garbage in nocturnal mood – but here Chelsey Boy moves at her own deliberate pace with this version. It’s strange, seductive, and certainly ominous.
“I’ve always loved Singapore Sling,” she confesses. “I heard Freaks again while driving out to Joshua Tree and thought, yes…but let’s make it cruel. A slow burn for my fellow yearners this Valentine’s Day.”
Cruel is the right word. The track unfolds like a held breath. Synths hover, bass lines circle, percussion taps at the ribs. Her strong vocal glides above it all, at times restrained to a whisper, at times fraying at the edges, suggesting hysteria without surrendering to it. The result is intimate and unsettling. Romance, recast. Desire, disciplined. For all you lonelyhearts out there munching on Brach’s conversation hearts through the tears, this is a cathartic balm.
Listen to Freaks below and order the single here.
Freaks (Singapore Sling Cover) by Chelsey Boy
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