Live Review: MEZKO celebrate an androgynous future on 'Come & Go'
MEZKO's video for 'Come & Go' pays tribute to the gender-blurring icons of 70s glam rock, delivering a stunning celebration of androgyny
Sydney duo MEZKO (the multi-instrumentalist pairing of KAT HARLEY and LAURA BAILEY) have released the visuals for their latest single, ‘Come & Go’, alongside the announcement of a national tour in June in support of the track. In their first material since their 2017 debut EP, Polychronic, the band delivers an affectionate tribute to the duo’s love of early 70s glam, a period in which iconoclasts such as DAVID BOWIE, IGGY POP and PATTI SMITH used their music and aesthetic presentations to blur the divide between gender and identity.
In true fashion, MEZKO keep one eye on these icons of the past while still looking towards creating icons of the future out of themselves, embellishing the track with all the stylistic trappings of 1970s glam-rock including blistering, distorted guitar riffs and a punching motorik-inspired beat, with contemporary production and industrial, pulsing synths. It’s glittery like glam-rock, but you can feel a gritty darkness weighing it down. It all builds to a hypnotically harmonised hook that balances the grittiness with the glitter. Inspired by the self-confidence espoused by their glam-rock icons, MEZKO attempt to find a space built and controlled solely for and by themselves away from the encroaching influence of an outside world.
On the song, the band say, “‘Come & Go’ is a song about just getting on with it. The video is inspired by the sounds and style of the early 70s - there’s no other genre that celebrates sass in the way glam does, and we also took some inspiration from that attitude when creating this song...In 2018 we’re still exploring the possibilities of individuals despite traditional gender limitations and looking to a more androgynous future.” The visuals for ‘Come & Go’ smoulder with this non-conforming attitude as MEZKO give us a glimpse into what such an androgynous future looks like.
Plug into the latest music with our FREE weekly newsletter
The black-and-white colour scheme recalls the gender dichotomies the duo are rebelling against whilst cast underneath stage lights and surrounded by photography flashes. But in the hands of MEZKO and director Ellen Hodgson, gender blurs and bleeds into a full spectrum as the duo and their doppelgängers become virtually indistinguishable underneath this monochromatic guise. It’s a relatively simple but spectacularly eye-catching celebration of MEZKO’s androgynous future.
MEZKO will be touring nationally behind ‘Come & Go’ - find all the details and tickets below:
IMAGE: Marcus Coblyn
SEE MORE:
More From Our Network
