Aye Nako has always been direct about the subjects of their music: “sad punk songs about being queer, trans, and black.” It’s listed right there on their Facebook page. You don’t need to know that to rock out to their fuzzy take on emo, but these words are their existence. When you’re black, queer, and trans, a forceful statement of identity is itself a political act.
Identity has been the focus of much of Aye Nako’s recorded output. And while their earliest compositions stayed mostly within the sonic boundaries of ’90s pop-punk, their growth and maturation has been inspiring. Their 2015 The Blackest Eye EP served up complex and poetic examinations of abuse, exclusion, and the multifaceted stigma of blackness. But from the first track of their new LP Silver Haze, it’s clear they’re not the same band. “We’re Different Now” is a tape collage of guitarist and singer Mars Dixon as a kid playing with a friend, augmented by a sparse drum-and-guitar backing track. As the last line echoes “We’re different now/Different now/Different now…” it hints that those changes are more than skin deep.
Aye Nako’s story is one of transition, including Dixon’s own. But even as testosterone treatments changed his singing—and subsequently, his approach to writing on guitar—Dixon was also welcoming another voice into the mix in guitarist Jade Payne. Payne wasn’t on Aye Nako’s debut LP, 2013’s Unleash Yourself, and while her guitar and background vocals added a new dynamic to the sound of The Blackest Eye, the songs were still Dixon’s. Silver Haze, then, represents a new era for the young Brooklynites—one with two equal voices. It’s an assertion backed up by the cover image, of the two songwriters sitting side-by-side, bonded by shared experience, each with their own take on the queer black American identity.
Payne’s songs are often just as sad, but they are occasionally imbued with righteous indignation—“When you’ve said your empty amens/Shed the skin of a dead sentiment,” she sings on “Arrow Island”—that complements Dixon’s resignation. Payne has also spent some time of late moonlighting on guitar for Sadie Dupuis’ Sad13 project; the influence of Dupuis’ other band, Speedy Ortiz, is particularly prominent in Payne’s songs on Silver Haze, from the vocal inflections to the guitar tone.
Dixon has developed a stronger grasp on dynamic vocal range, confidently moving from whispers to whines to wails, incorporating more complex chord structures. Aye Nako still sound like a band that grew up obsessed with Superchunk, but now their output has less in common with Drive-Thru’s catalog than it does, say, Jade Tree’s. Payne, who works as a sound engineer at Brooklyn’s Silent Barn collective, recorded their last EP, but for Silver Haze the band worked with Joe Rogers at Room 17. His influence is especially felt on lead single “Particle Mace,” a pop song washed in fuzz with vocal tracks that shine through the noise.
The lyrics on Silver Haze maintain a relative obliqueness, which makes these intensely personal portraits relatable to anyone who has ever been on the outside looking in, or struggled with bodily self-reflection. If you’ve seen a Maybelline ad, you might guess that “Maybe She’s Bored With It” was about makeup—but the line “Caffeinated dreams/At the dawn of another work week/That’s the routine” cuts to the heart of the working class experience, drawn from Dixon’s time working in a makeup factory. His deadpan drawl of “Getting lost in the industrial noise” feels earned, an emotional resonance impossible to fake. Because as much as they may have matured, Silver Haze still feels like the best of Aye Nako—songs that clawed their way out of their writers, thoughts and ideas that would have eaten them alive if they didn’t get out.
