Nomy Lamm
Effigy (YoYo)
by Terry Sawyer
for Venus Magazine

Anyone whose bio contains the line "Nomy Lamm is a badass fatass jew dyke amputee" has already earned half my love for sheer, unapologetic sass. Lamm
sports a club diva's set of pipes and has clearly finished her degree at the Annie Lennox school of white-girl soul. Her voice is alternately booming and vulnerable.

One suspects that her refusal to stay within the confines of genre is as philosophical as it is surly. Lamm barrels through hip-hop ("L-e-t-s-g-o"), electro-clash ("Did You See Me Or Uh"), spoken word tirades ("Spell #9") and forlorn accordian mariner ballads like "Miracle". While her obsession with body image, proto-feminism and ill-defined anarchy could easily morph into bumper-sticker material, Lamm's aura of oddity keeps these subjects queer, fierce and enticingly horny.

Surely part of Lamm's enormous appeal is the fact that she wields a vicious wit evidenced in lines like "what are your priorities/whose in your sorority/when is the first time someone told you were ugly" or my personal favorite "I'm a sinner and a cyborg". Clearly, Lamm wants you to laugh on Effigy almost as much as you pause to consider her funkily disjointed deconstructions.

At times, Lamm's experimentalism impedes the enjoyment of the track, with glitchy beats that either bury the vocals or simply pierce the eardrum. For the most part though, Lamm remembers that the listener is supposed to be duly seduced and she resumes the infectious drumbeat for her very own cult of personality.