The Divine Saint of Love drops a firebomb with "Ann Frank Coochie Stank"

The Divine Saint of Love throws down the gauntlet with "Ann Frank Coochie Stank," which not only commands attention but also gets your attention. And a chaotic, lightning-rod shock of the sort that has everyone buzzing about the artist's new EP, due later this summer, like something digitally beamed from a vacuum chamber. "Ann Frank Coochie Stank" is a sonic protest intentionally confrontational, audaciously weird, and utterly unforgettable. That's the kind of track you don't listen to; you survive it. And in the process, you might feel a little less dead.

Checking in as a no-holds-barred raised middle finger to censorship and comfort, the track is brutally raw yet oddly uplifting. It's high self-esteem music, not in terms of affirmations or bubblegum hooks, but in the confidence to make noise, unapologetically, no matter how plain things might appear on the surface. The Divine Saint of Love doesn't come to comfort you, but they come to mess you up.

The lyrics are no less jolting, irreverent to the point of making one squirm, they shock people as much as hold their ugliness before them. It could be gratuitous in lesser hands, but in "Ann Frank Coochie Stank" it walks the razor's edge toward a purpose. "This is the madness you've been through/There's method in it." It compels you to confront questions you may not want the answers to about selfhood, taboo, and why society is so terrified of the unmediated voice.

The production sounds tentative and unstable, a basement show that flames out into an existential meltdown. Synths spar with percussive anarchy, and the vocals glide with a bite that's equal parts punk fury and spoken-word sermon. No one worries here about radio-friendliness. It is music for people who have grown tired of pretending music that sounds as if it's been ripped from the gut. If this is any indication of things to come from the EP, The Divine Saint of Love is about to unleash a project that doesn't take any prisoners, and that's exactly what music needs at the moment.

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