YOUR NEW FAVOURITE THING
Las Vegas androgyne Shamir doesn’t sound like anyone else,
Elastic-voiced Las Vegas androgyne Shamir Bailey, 20, already had his first LP, Ratchet, proclaimed “the year’s best debut” by Spin magazine in mid-May. He plays Bestival on the Toronto Islands this Saturday. What’s the deal? Ratchet so deftly cloaks Shamir’s singular, high-register pipes and tormented confessionals in hip-twizzlin’ production steeped in classic disco, house and electro you’d be forgiven for thinking he was a wise-beyond-his-years student of American dance-music history.
But no, he just kind of stumbled into it during a “free summer” away from his DIY duo, Anorexia, when he thought he’d try his hand at making pop music.
“I literally know nothing about electronic or dance music,” he laughs from a train bound for Boston, giving full credit to producer/co-writer Nick Sylvester — who snapped Shamir up for his GODMODE label immediately when Bailey casually emailed him some files a couple of years ago — for providing the “skill and knowledge” in that regard.
“For me, coming from Vegas, electronic music was, like, EDM music: DJ pool parties and dubstep and stuff like that. So I got this drum machine and I was trying to do the anti- version of that and it kind of ended up sounding like house music.
“And when I showed it to Nick, he was, like, ‘Oh, you must be inspired by such-and-such and such-andsuch.’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t know these people. I don’t even know what house music is.’ ” Why all the fuss? Simply put, the kid is a star. His gen- derless, fluttering voice occasionally brings to mind Prince or such “male divas” past as Robert Owens or Jimmy Somerville, but Shamir is genuinely blessed with the gift of not sounding like anyone else.
And he’s not limited to singing hipster-friendly dance anthems, either. Oh, no. As he recently told the New York Times, he spent his high school years longing to be Taylor Swift and playing country music. He’s already committed Miranda Lambert and Lindi Ortega covers to tape.
“I struggle with my voice sometimes. I’m not able to really blend in vocally, so I kind of have to just make my own way and do my own thing. My voice is not that special to me, but I guess to other people it is,” he says modestly, admitting he’s delighted people seem to care.
“I try to make my music really relatable, but I also put a lot of myself in my music. A lot of my music is very personal, on a level, so the fact that people relate to it is a really great feeling for me. It’s like, ‘OK, I’m not the only one who feels this way,’ you know?” What song do I need to hear right now? “On the Regular.” Try getting that one out of your head. An impossibly sticky single for the summer.