Maybe it’s just me, but when I heard Paris Paloma’s single “labour” floating around TikTok over a year ago, I was hooked. The voice, the story, and the anger behind it all caught my attention right from the beginning, leading me down the rabbit hole of her, at the time, brief discography. When I found out she was releasing a whole album, I quite literally threw my phone. Following a similar style to “labour,” her new album Cacophony details the struggle of being a woman in a man’s world.
Paloma wrote these songs with a tiredness and sung them with an anger most women are, unfortunately, accustomed to. The most well known single for this album, “labour,” set the tone for the album, as she sings about how overworked women in the household have become, expected to go above and beyond while the men can scrape by with the bare minimum and weaponized incompetence, all because he is a man. You can hear voices overlapping in the bridge, as if hundreds of women are releasing their pent up frustrations at the endless cycle they work tirelessly to break. This song set the bar high for the rest of the album, and Paloma did not disappoint.
If it’s possible to touch on every issue a modern woman faces in the span of 56 minutes and 15 songs, this album did just that. Opening with songs such as “my mind (now)” and “drywall,” Paloma speaks (or sings) about abuse and the processing of it, going from self-blame to the realization of a power imbalance in the relationship and lack of emotional maturity from the abuser. “boys, bugs, and men” brings up the issue of the “boys will be boys” mentality, implying it teaches them from a young age that, by exerting and abusing power over someone or something they view as weaker than them, they can get away with almost anything. The song “bones on the beach” speaks on the feeling of not belonging anywhere, and the bone-tiredness that comes with it hand in hand. Referencing the tragic post-mortem fate of Marilyn Monroe brought on by Hugh Hefner, “last woman on earth” is about how women throughout history haven’t been safe from the gaze of men even in death. Despite the theme for the rest of the album, “knitting song” sticks out as a more positive note in the story of women. Diverging from the hardships portrayed in the rest of the album, this song is about how generations of women are connected through the most domestic, mundane of things. Even in the general theme of oppression and growing resentment, this song is a warm and welcoming one.
Cacophony is something I could actually dissect and go on about for hours (and I have). Paris Paloma’s emotion conveyed through her songs, from burning rage to depression, never fails to give me chills. She truly captures the experience of womanhood, the good and the bad, the need to grow and adapt or stay stuck forever in the worst of situations. While I treat her like my little underground artist, she truly deserves all the recognition in the world. Cacophony has supplied me with an endless amount of music to scream in the car and is absolute perfection.
Rating: 10/10
