Where can you turn when things don’t look quite the way you imagined? When expectations shift, dreams are deferred, and people disappear?, a persistence of vision and radical creativity provide meaning in an indecipherable realm. Out on Valentine’s Day, Pelvis Wrestley’s wildly inventive second LP –– sees Violet embrace impermanence with open arms, putting the performer’s gift for queer world-building on full display.
Violet began developing the concept in the early 2010s, filling journals with chronicles of the divine being. Inspired in part by real-life missing persons cases observed during high school and college, the self-construction also acted as a haven for the young queer Texan while under the constrictions of Christian schooling.
Violet, a South Austin native, relocated to Seattle in 2007 and performed in sequence-based synth trio ANDY . After a decadelong stretch in the Pacific Northwest, Violet resettled in Austin, refreshed and eager to make a splash in their hometown music scene with the newly formed Pelvis Wrestley. The pandemic shutdown put these dreams on hold.
For an album anchored in impermanence, Pelvis Wrestley certainly manages to have fun. As pastoral woodwinds supplement the celestial opening chords of lead-off hymn “Found a Friend,” listeners find themselves fully immersed in a world of high-concept pop eclecticism. Bouncing from the wacky Eighties-inspired synth of “No One You Know” to infectious baroque dance-along “Holy Host,” the experimenter skirts around structures with glee.