Nomy Lamm "Effigy" on YoYo RECORDS
Tobi Vail
Careless Talk Costs Lives, UK
Spring 2003

When you think solo record do you think singer/songwriter venture? When you think singer/songwriter venture do you think of a tortured boy genius being
vulnerable and tearing off the mask of being a tough guy, letting his feelings show, truth-as-confession style? When you listen to it over and over again do you feel like you are falling for a trick? Is that the real him or is it just another façade? And more importantly, where does this male tradition leave women artists?

Nomy Lamm's "Effigy" is an example of a new kind of feminist solo work that rejects this equation of authenticity with the stripping away of layers. It's a record full of rich operatic vocals, disco beats and pop song refrains that I hear in the same category as Julie Ruin and Tracy and the Plastics. Julie Ruin used persona to experiment with feminist ideas and formalism. Tracy and the Plastics use video projections to create the illusion of separate band members which are all actually the same woman
having conversations with herself(s).

With "Effigy", Nomy Lamm appropriates conventional pop song lyrics, comments on them and in so doing locates the self in negotiation with these socially constructed narratives of traditional femininity. In all these works identity is fluid, and gender is artifice. There is no real self whining to get out from underneath it all--just plenty of authentic, emotive, feminist self-definition. Refreshing as fuck.