Someone give Marie Davidson a raise. Give her a new role or – more fittingly – employee of the month. Whatever it is, she absolutely deserves it, because her new album ‘Working Class Woman’ is a stonking triumph.
The concepts of work, club culture and fame repeatedly rear their head on the Montreal musician’s fourth solo album, but there’s little in here that’ll remind you of your shitty nine-to-five. Take the album’s finest moment, ‘Work It’, a groovy hit that will resonate with everyone working their fucking arse off right now: “You wanna know how I get away with everything? / I work, all the fucking time”. ‘Your Biggest Fan’, meanwhile, is a wickedly funny and sarcastic shot at all the posers on the club scene (“So, frankly, is this album about taking risks…”).
Throughout, Davidson refuses to be pigeonholed into any one corner of the club – with each track, she flexes her songwriting muscles in fascinating ways. The dreamy ‘Lara’ is a mind-melting composition, while the twinkling final track ‘La chambre intérieure’ acts as a remarkably human closer: “I feel empty in the summer breeze / In the mountain facing me“. ‘So Right’ is a bouncy club bop where the poppier edges rear their head, but it’s the pulsating beats of ‘Workaholic Paranoid Bitch’ and ‘Burn Me’ that will drill down into your brain longest.
Davidson’s ‘Working Class Woman’ is smart, intriguing and deserves to be heralded as one of the year’s most inventive releases – Lord knows she’s worked hard enough for it.
