Elizabeth le Fey was once in a Foxygen, but since the sordid departure that amounted to a publicized and now removed Tumblr post, she’s pivoted her focus on solo material as Globelamp. Her upcoming record The Orange Glow grieves without remorse or chagrin. The previously released “Controversial/Confrontational” is a psych-folk number reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane, but with the humility of Alanis Morrisette’s confessional tone in Jagged Little Pill. On “Controversial/Confrontational” le Fey’s remorseless approach is best expressed in the blunt “Men cannot be trusted and I know women too / but I believed you.” There is much to be pondered as to whom the “you” might be, but her latest single “San Francisco” leaves little to question.
Many songs contain the city of San Francisco in the title, but Globelamp’s “San Francisco” was not written for the island city in the fog. It is less a romanticizing of the Paris of the West and more a replay of events that in hindsight are all too prophetic. It’s hard to look back on her tenure in Foxygen, which began with an appearance in the “San Francisco” video and ended much like the LA-born girl that Sam France charmingly abandons in the eponymous song, and not feel like the Syd to her Nancy was playing out a life through lyrics. The merry-go-lightly abandonment of Foxygen’s song bares no rearview mirror, which gives Globelamp’s “San Francisco” the feeling of the story retold from the woman’s perspective. Globelamp’s version has taken refuge in a Tenderloin piano bar where nightly she sings to make bus fare in order to return to LA.
Globelamp’s The Orange Glow is out October 27 on Psychedelic Thriftstore Recordings.
