Anita Velveeta makes some of her music on synth and some on guitar, but she'd rather not be encumbered by either when she's on stage.
“I like not playing an instrument because I can get into the crowd and just be a better front person and put on a better show for people,” she told me this past summer. “People want to dance but they don't want to start dancing. If you’re the one that's crazy, they'll dance the whole night.”
And if you’ve seen Anita perform, you know that’s true. She plunges into the midst of her revelers and challenges them to keep up. That's the sort of energy and abandon that has placed her near the center of a burgeoning queer rock scene, which I discussed in a lengthy profile of Anita earlier this year.
Local music fans first got to know Anita with Alien Book Club, a band that stalled out during the pandemic. Given some time to regroup, Anita emerged solo with a collection of video game music. She's created on two parallel tracks since then, serving up both pointedly whimsical synth tracks and noisy punk. You can hear a sample of the latter on here most recent album, I Saw the Devil in Portland Oregon, which features the righteous anthem "TERFS Will Not Get Into Heaven." (She teaches you how to play it here.)
Now she's ready to bring those styles together. Anita has been at work on an album that’s equal parts synth and guitar, which she predicts will drop sometime next spring. It's likely to further cement her status as an example of an out and untrammeled trans artist for younger musicians to see, and she’s accepting her place as a (fairly young) elder at 30.
“There aren't a lot of older trans people, you know, for various bad reasons," Anita observes. "So it's nice to be that for some people.”
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