Ava Rodriguez
Depending on who you ask, punk rock has died and been resurrected at various points since the 1970s. The executioners are legion — record labels, commercialization, selling out, the band Green Day. The early 2010s were perhaps the bleakest years yet, but a new wave of DIY artists is reviving the punk ethos and infusing it with fresh political ideologies.
“Punk is not a sound anymore, it’s a lifestyle,” says Sylvia Johnson, a Madison musician and one-half of the new pop-punk duo Gender Confetti. “And being queer is one of the most punk things you can do.”
Johnson, who also performs solo as Midas Bison, formed Gender Confetti last summer with drummer Elyse Clouthier, who plays in the bands Clean Room and Lurk Hards. Both Johnson and Clouthier are members of Half-Stack Sessions, an advocacy group for women and non-binary people in the Madison music scene. The duo will play Half-Stack’s spring showcase May 12 at the High Noon Saloon.
Already one of the busiest and most talked-about new bands in the local scene, Gender Confetti recently released a seven-song demo, which was recorded in Clouthier’s home. The music is stripped down — guitar, drums, dual vocals — and charmingly lo-fi. Earnest, joyful and refreshingly vulnerable, the lyrical themes touch on friendship, love and gender politics. “We started writing songs about things we wanted to talk about,” Johnson says.
Though they share mutual friends, the pair met by chance after Clouthier overheard Johnson talking about gender identity at a local cafe. They later connected at Dyke Dive, a gay-friendly recurring pop-up party, and decided to collaborate on a project that was explicitly queer — a term that was once considered a pejorative, but has been reclaimed as a way to describe non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities. It’s also a radical political ideology.
“Queer means to me that I can have fluidity in my sexuality and gender identity throughout my life,” says Clouthier who identifies as a gender-queer, gender-fluid, gender-non-conforming trans-masculine woman. “That’s the best description for me right now, but none of those [labels] hold me back.”
Clouthier, who grew up skateboarding and playing in punk bands, acknowledges punk culture has its share of stereotypes and cliches. “I’m more into the kind of punks who ride bikes and make gardens and make DIY spaces,” Clouthier says. “To me, punk is about being your whole self, taking care of yourself and your community and being vulnerable.”
Over the years, Johnson had identified as gay, straight and bisexual before learning about queerness and realizing that identifying as non-binary was an option. “It’s so much more expansive,” Johnson says. “I felt like I broke through something that I needed to.”
Gender politics and the rise of genderqueer identities is something of a trending topic — a recent study found that 27 percent of children in California are gender nonconforming. Johnson says Gender Confetti’s music is a form of activism aimed at raising visibility, promoting the liberation of marginalized people and encouraging self-reflection within the music community and beyond. So far, the project has elicited emotional reactions — someone even came out as genderqueer at a recent show, Johnson says.
The band’s catchiest song, “Confetti,” is a sweet and melodic ode to romantic friendships. But perhaps the ethos is best summed up on the song “Wildflower Drive.” “We sing this line, ‘We’re calling you in to conjure the future,’” Clouthier says. “It’s about creating the world you want to see, starting with yourself. That feels like the start of liberation.”
