Elizabeth M. Drummond makes weird and fantastic music, and weird and fantastic music videos. This one is called Clowns, and it’s the new anthem for my professional life:

Brilliant. (Thanks, BuffaBlog) ‘Clown’ has been my go-to pejorative for years. I want a button I can press that plays the chorus of that song on demand when I run out of patience with work-related things.

Anyway: Elizabeth M. Drummond is from Melbourne, Austraila, and according to this profile from 2022, had some success with a band called Little May almost a decade ago. She’s put out three singles in 2024, and they’re all quite different. Here’s Everything, from May. It’s kind of low-key electropop, and if I didn’t know it was the same artist I wouldn’t suspect it:

She seems unconcerned with genre or musical style. What unites her songs is the writing — Liz (per the article linked above) has a specific lyrical style that’s pretty unusual, including casual f-bombs dropped into otherwise radio-ready songs. The character comes through in the videos as well — she seems to bring a weird sense of fun to the work that’s rare, somewhere between a Ti West movie and those cutscenes from Natural Born Killers. Here’s the first single from this run, from March, called Simplify:

That’s a weird music video! The ending gets creepy in a hurry. And there’s bonus material — the interview that isn’t in the cut above is linked at the end. It’s kind of the icing on the cake of this whole post:

Just bonkers in the best way.

She released a series of singles and an EP called Congratulations in 2022 that’s a little more conventional, both musically and visually, though the fixation on early 80’s film style is there too. The songs on that EP are frequently beautiful, though like the ones above, watching the videos really changes the way the song hits. If any of this is appealing to you, there are several other great videos on her YouTube channel. It’s difficult not to post them all here.

That 2022 profile in Magnet Magazine is a great piece and you should read it. Her story is a good one: early success followed by the meltdown of the band and some substance issues, and Drummong feeling chewed up and spit out of the scene by 2020, and finding her way back in her own distinct style. It ends with this quote:

“I don’t want to decide on a ‘sound’ or theme yet. Throughout my time in Little May, I had so many opinions. There was so much experimenting I wanted to do. I guess I was ‘the difficult one.’ That time period was so damaging, but also illuminating. I guess I’m just now kind of scratching the surface of how weird I am.” She laughs. “I learned from my experience in the band that I can pass as ‘not weird.’ But I just don’t fucking care anymore about other people’s opinions of my music, of me. I just want to keep it small and do my own little thing.” 

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