Description
Label Review.
2019 album also available on Vinyl.
Our Overview.
American, Portland based, post-punk rock band Summer Cannibals, fronted by Jessica Boudreaux are releasing their new album ‘Can’t Tell Me No’, which was the result of deciding to scrap an album, that had been finished for over a year and start from scratch, after escaping a manipulative personal and creative relationship. And this defiant release very existence is about taking back power. Jessica explains “We had to sacrifice an album we’d worked hard on so that someone abusive and manipulative couldn’t benefit from it,” says Boudreaux. “It was, in a matter of 24 hours, making the decision to start something new or let them win.”
Creation and determination prevailed; along with Cassi Blum, Devin Shirley, and Ethan Butman, Boudreaux wrote and recorded and mixed many of the new tracks during 14-hour days. She and Blum hunkered down in Boudreaux’s home studio, where they had been already been engineering records for other bands, and finished Can’t Tell Me No as Summer Cannibals’ first entirely self-engineered and produced album.
“Writing this record and making it ourselves was about liberation from the parts of an industry that have protected abusers for way too long, and about saying fuck you to the people who have invalidated my and so many others’ experiences of abuse,” says Boudreaux. “It’s really easy for people to condemn the government and figures we see on the news,” says Boudreaux, “but those same people often fail when it comes to standing up to and calling out the people in their lives who are just as evil.” Songs like “False Anthem” confront this cowardice; “Hate who they are, say you hate what they do,” snarls Boudreaux against an insistent, hard-charging guitar, “but you love all the things that they promise you.”
'Cant Tell Me No' is, as much as anything, about finding love and acceptance on the other side of pain. On a larger scale, the album stands up not just to a relationship or an industry, but to the people and constructs that have been trying to silence women and hold them down for so long. Its about doing the right thing, says Boudreaux, even when its terrifying.