I met Emily years ago through a dear mutual friend, and have always felt toward her both a kinship born of intimately knowing and loving the same person, and a crazy-girl-recognize-crazy-girl vibe-as though, behind all of the lol-but-what-if, there were a mutual understanding of, Okay, but really, what if? We sat on a bench in her childhood neighborhood park, Tompkins Square, in May to talk about 9/11, rapping e-girls, jealousy, and the making of the “Perfect Brain” music video, premiering here.

Her work encapsulates the experience of being not just in the panopticon, but of it. Allan is, in real time, “draining libidinal energy into the rabbit hole of figuring it all out,” as she puts it. I had heard moments of the music digitally, and seen snippets of Allan performing live around town in various Instagram stories, but none of these fragments could accurately gesture at the otherworldly experience of watching her on stage, in person: ethereal and New York earnest and deadpan reverently howling and glacially detached in on the joke, but undone by the punchline.

Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery a few months ago. This duality shone as I watched her sing “Perfect Brain” and “Steps to Destruction,” two singles from her forthcoming concept album, Clanging-in reference to the arcane and archaic psychiatric symptom of uncontrollable rhyming-in St.

Document premieres the “Perfect Brain” music video from upcoming album ‘Clanging,’ picking the lyricist’s brain on e-girls and jealousy in Tompkins Square ParkĮmily Allan is a haunted and haunting performer.

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