The art-rock of Mandy, Indiana conjures the spirit of May 1968, when French students and workers spent seven weeks in an orgiastic, decentralized uprising against capitalism and state violence. That’s partly because vocalist Valentine Caulfield uses French lyrics to deliver brutal indictments of patriarchy, imperialism, and white supremacy. But it also comes from the unmistakable urgency and imagination in the band’s sound, which has a romantic and ephemeral feel. The members of Mandy, Indiana are French and English and based in Manchester and Berlin, and they originally called their band Gary, Indiana because they liked that there was an American city with a common man’s name. When they signed to New York-based label Fire Talk, they were encouraged to change it because they weren’t familiar with Gary’s history of economic decline, high crime, and racial disparity. The band decided to stick with Indiana but use a common woman’s name instead. Their politically charged lyrics call Mandy, Indiana into existence as an imagined sister city that stands in opposition to the forces that ravaged its real twin.
The band write and record piecemeal, then collage elements together, and they made their full-length debut, I’ve Seen a Way (which dropped in May), in sites that included a crypt, a cave, and a mall. Like their American peers Boy Harsher, Mandy, Indiana take inspiration from film, but instead of making sad and sensual darkwave, they stick closer to noise, techno, and punk. Each song on I’ve Seen a Way hits like a scene in a dark, action-driven art-house movie, creating a cinematic arc that guitarist and producer Scott Fair told MusicRadar was partly inspired by French art-horror director and screenwriter Julia Ducournau, best known for Raw and Titane. It’s as energetic, sexy, and dangerous as rock ’n’ roll should be, and it lashes against systemic injustices in ways that make Mandy, Indiana seem less like a group and more like a state of mind.
Mandy, Indiana Mass open. Tue 12/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15, 21+