I had just been thinking about how painful it is to wait for new EMA material. EMA’s solo debut, Past Life Martyred Saints, from Erika M. Anderson, who once led Gowns, remains among my top albums of the century, with the two subsequent records standing strong as well. As we near ten years since Exile In The Outer Ring, EMA’s latest release to date, it’s pretty exciting to unexpectedly spot her reappearing with a cover of a Motels track, recorded for an artistic work.
I believe the most recent EMA release was a Modest Mouse cover that appeared on a 2021 Under The Radar compilation. In 2023 she formed a supergroup dubbed Thrash Palace, pairing Talk Normal’s Sarah Register with XBXRX’s Vice Cooler; they issued a stylish two-track single via Sub Pop, before the project went quiet. And now she returns with her interpretation of the Motels’ 1979 classic “Total Control,” the group hailing from Berkeley in the early new wave scene.
Back in the Motels’ version, “Total Control” stretched into a six-minute satirical epic exploring the notion of bartering one’s soul for absolute dominion over another. It was even picked up by Tina Turner for the 1985 We Are The World project. EMA’s rendition appears within “Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach,” a piece she calls a hybrid multimedia performance created by EMA in collaboration with visual artist Tabitha Nikolai. Additional details, according to Bandcamp:
Part origin story, part healing spell. “Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach” is a feature-length duet performance in which Erika M. Anderson (EMA) and visual artist Tabitha Nikolai use video game technologies to build out the psycho-sexual inner world of a girl-child in the ’80s. Soundtracked by modular synth and guitar, a narrator searches for her shape amid commercial detritus, degraded 3D scans and a Polly Pocket apocalypse.
Cool! EMA’s seven-minute take is pretty faithful to the original, but she reworks those prim new wave hooks by throwing them into heavy, sprawling space-rock overdrive. It sounds sick as hell. Below, check out EMA’s “Total Control” cover and the Motels’ original.
You can find more info on “Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach” here. It’ll screen 11/21 at Portland’s Tomorrow theater, with both EMA and Tabitha Nikolai in attendance.
