She-Devils make their own world on self-titled debut

Audrey Ann Boucher and Kyle Jukka paired up several years ago when sharing residence at a band rehearsal space. The fact that Boucher had little noteworthy singing experience didn’t give them pause. Soon gaining notice from the likes of Grimes and others, She-Devils put out a self-titled EP in early 2016. Its leadoff track, “Come”, introduces this She-Devils as well, refurbished and stripped of its springy go-go guitar riff. The album version is less “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” and more dizzy psych pop, indicative of Jukka’s move away from retro production values while still sourcing from plenty of vintage samples.

The moment that you think you have She-Devils figured out is when it will catch you off balance and dig its horns in. Boucher’s repetitive lyrics, more often than not concerned with romantic longing and (mis)communication, don’t feel out of the ordinary until it sinks in how she keeps threatening “I got a gun in my pocket / And I’m ready to fire” over and over, to a lover who has been running around in “Make You Pay”. “I want to / Go inside of you / And control / The way you move”, she admits on “The World Laughs”, the come-hither in her voice belying what a creepy proposition it actually is.

Unpacking his stuffed boxes, Jukka takes a crack at jangling fairground swing on “You Don’t Know”, and stirs up Boucher’s recurring yé-yé mode with a gurgling, swampy support bed on “Never Let Me Go”, a love child of “Zou Bisou Bisou” and Animal Collective’s Water Curses EP. He is adept at turning the familiar strange, and She-Devils’ world is one where unlikely combinations make the most sense.