GutterPutter

CONTENT WARNING: DEALS WITH TRANSPHOBIA, SUICIDE, DEPRESSION, AND DISCRIMINATORY THEMES.

Whether we talk about pride month, we tend to always aim for representation. Punk rock, for example, has queercore as one of its representing genres for LGBT+ themes. On a wider scale, we look at artists like SOPHIE, who started the hyperpop trend as a trans artist; Freddie Mercury, whose flamboyant style is backed by his well-documented bisexuality; and the Pet Shop Boys, who wrote love songs with gender-neutral pronouns. We accustom ourselves everyday with more and more defiance against the traditional binary notion through queer reconstruction on what constitutes gender. 

A lot of the shows, films, games, and songs that we check out now are either made by or inspired by those who are a part of the LGBT+ spectrum. It’s refreshing to see a break be taken from the past heteronormative dominance.  However, we do also see a lot of discrimination be made against the LGBT+ circle especially with the trans community. At the time of writing, you have British academics, American politicians, and more who aim to undermine the rights of those whose gender identity is outside of their biological sex. It’s becoming a big social problem especially when you throw in reasons such as being ‘gender-critical’, religion, or in appealing to the social system. 

Activists and academics like Judith Butler or Jayne Ozanne have long thought of gender as being a social construct and advocates in favour of trans rights. One that is ‘performative’ in the sense that what we constitute as being masculine or feminine is established largely through repeating the same action as a way to assert your identity. To try and argue that we shouldn’t force others to conform to the expectations set by their body would only be met with statistics that paint the trans community in a bad light. Excuses were always made to erode acknowledging the rights of the group. 

Enter the Hotelier. Previously, I’ve mentioned them as one of the most notable names to have emerged from the emo revival scene throughout the 2010s on the back of their sophomore record Home, Like Noplace Is There. One of the key selling points that allows the band to rise up to the top is their lyricisms, rife with heartrending images of nature breaking down in sync to the human condition. In intertwining suffering with what is natural or inevitable, Home, Like Noplace Is There stands out for how authentic it represents depression, guilt, or insecurities. It’s no wonder why the band manages to form a cult following; it’s rare do you get a group whose words can cut as deep as their whiny singing.

Arguably the most memorable track in the album is ‘Your Deep Rest’, a hard-hitting standout about dealing with the guilt of a friend’s death. On the surface layer, we recognise it as a tragic look into suicide and how the narrating voice overlooks the signs that lead to their friend’s demise. It’s a common trope that always tends to work well because of how easy it can be to ignore hints that someone is not feeling well or how we’re vulnerable to retrospective regrets. The execution, made through the riveting guitars and drums, explodes in the final chorus which finalises both the closure felt at knowing that their friend is finally free from their lifelong misery and their responsibility at not stepping in to save their life.

Yet, bassist and lead singer Christian Holden was once shown in an interview to have struggled to conform to his cisgender identity in the months leading up to the album’s release. Even as he feels fine with being known as male, the constraints around gender binarism and societal milieu helps to implicitly inform ‘Your Deep Rest’. While we may initially hear the song as an elegy to a lost friend, a notable number of fans interpret it as being more specifically about the consequences of not coming out as your true self. If the obvious meaning incriminates the narrating voice for not helping their friend, then the queer interpretation implies that the friend’s suffering stems from a systemic line of ignorance and obliviousness.

If we take the first verse as one example, we get a perspective of being ignorant of the signs that the friend is thinking of suicide. The returning of the gift from “back when [they’re] weren’t so upset”, the note that’s been written, and the tidying up of the room are all signs that point to an impending suicide attempt. Yet, such an angle is backed even more if we were to see the friend as being trans. The tidying up of the room gives an impression of keeping up an act, an illusion that implicitly denies being able to be your authentic self. The note writing, while we do not know of its content, can infer the sign of honesty coming at last to explain the context for why the action must be taken. Finally, the nostalgic look back into when the friend doesn’t suffer from severe mood swings can be seen as being a retrospective symptom of gender dysphoria as if to deny how uncomfortable they feel in acting as their biological sex. This segues into a road of self-reflection over the friend’s life.

Hammering down the queer reading as a critique to the systematic discrimination against trans people is the chorus which grows as the song progresses. It’s one thing to call in sick as a way to try and grieve for losing a friend at their funeral. It’s another to feel disgust at seeing their body and picture yourself as being responsible alongside their family, reaching up to the point of not expecting closure at all. To look at it from another angle, the narrating voice exhibits guilt over their denial of their friend’s gender identity, recognising the difference between their assigned sex and who they want to be. Throw in a reference to the friend’s family as well and now you have a dichotomy in their intent. What should be one last effort at showing their support to someone they care about is instead replaced by an imposition of traditional gender roles. There’s no leeway in how the friend could adapt to their situation without fracturing their own identity.

Now, Holden mixes in natural imagery in the second verse. In describing the process as being like “branching off” which “[saps]” the love within the friend’s family,  it both showcases the inevitability of their diverging gender identity from their sex and to point to the irony of reversing a natural transition. It’s a saddening, negative use of the semantic field that, by alluding to the tree, amplifies the stigmatisation of being stuck with the body that you don’t want. This is eventually critical as the climatic bridge had all but made clear as to the what led to the friend’s suicide, “You said you’re trapped in your own body / And getting deeper every day”.

If anything, let us pick up more on family itself. Seen largely as a centrepiece of traditional, conservative values, the friend’s family is the symbol of the toxicity that comes with upholding it as a purely moral stance. The bridge, in revealing the inevitability of the friend’s gender dysphoria, also hints of their relatives’ repressions be it homosexuality, depression, or generational trauma. Learning about the depth of your family’s dysfunctions has been a prevailing theme when it comes to storytelling that’s been explored by writers like Jonathan Franzen in The Corrections. However, while the underlying subtext often highlights that love can still exist between the feuding members, Holden holds a more ambiguous depiction of the friend’s family as having abandoned them in their time of need. This insinuates the idolisation of the seemingly false ‘traditions’ over what should’ve been a revolutionary experience. Instead, the family and the narrating voice dismissed it as an “imbalanced chemical crush”.

We’re led to the end where the narrating voice acknowledges that “tradition of closure nearly felt impossible”. In a psychological fashion, the theme of trans discrimination vs. conservatism is basically said out loud because how is everything fine when someone’s hurt by the status quo? As the voice bleats out “I should have never [given] my word to you / Not a cry, not a sound”, it’s manifested as much an extinguishment of their denial as it does their grievance in their guilt. This finally caps off with the key refrain (uttered before in the bridge) of the friend’s motive over their goal of their gender identity: “ ‘Remember me for me’ / I watched you set your spirit free”.

An interview with RVA Magazine highlights that the key part of Home, Like Noplace Is There lies in its implicitly political theme due to how living a sheltered life can lead to a warped perception of life. While many would interpret some songs there through the lens of capitalist critique or a conceptual look at society as a whole, to see the album through the perspective of trans difficulty is among the most popular interpretations. With that, ‘Your Deep Rest’ stands out as a testament that, as much representation as non-binary and trans people do get now, they still suffer from being seen as the other. It’s key that we do everything we can to preserve their rights and to not let them fall victim to hate.