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Point blankPhiladelphia’s Amanda Blank kills it every night
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In conversation over the phone, Philadelphia singer/MC Amanda Blank is every bit as machine-gun motor-mouthed as the countless adults-only, anatomically correct cameos she’s made on records by pals like Spank Rock, Aaron LaCrate and Santigold. On her debut album, I Love You, Ms. Blank’s rapid-fire raunch and ribaldry abounds, but there’s more to it than that. “Before all of this,” says Blank, “I played music with my friend who was this black, gay-guy riot grrrl. We bonded over our love for Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill and PJ Harvey—we did this PJ Harvey cover band that was really funny. Once I started really getting into songwriting, I started writing songs like that, and I never really played them for people because they’re really personal. You get nervous—oh man, do I really want people to hear this more vulnerable side?” Apparently so, because after some hemming and hawing, and a nudge from producer Switch (XXXchange and Diplo also lent hands on I Love You), the wistful, Lykke Li-assisted “Leaving You Behind” was chosen to close out the album. “I put the wall down a bit to let that one go, but it was not an easy decision to make. It’s different, but I thought it was a really honest song, and maybe somebody could relate to it, so you know what? Fuck it, let’s do it.” With the same attitude, Blank’s distilled her live show to a bare minimum. “Everybody’s got all this bullshit, so much shit going on onstage, I just kinda want to do it myself. I really embraced the Karen O attitude. I don’t need any of that shit. Maybe you need 10 dancers, maybe you need confetti cannons and a dwarf to come out and breathe fire, but I don’t need that—because I kill it every night! “I figured, if I can do it alone, I can do it with all that stuff—but I can’t do it with all that stuff if I can’t get up there and just do it alone, and feel like it worked in the reverse. So I was like, alright, I’m gonna test myself, see what I’m made of. I did, and I feel good about it.” WITH PEACHES AT METROPOLIS ON |
